Microsoft Publisher

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Once you have the basics of placing and moving objects in Publisher, you may want to have finer control over exactly how and where your objects go.  Publisher has many tools that can help you with your layout.

Guidelines

By default, Publisher displays guidelines at the margin of the page.  To help you line up objects on the page, you can turn on more guidelines.  Guidelines appear only in Publisher’s design view and do not print.

• Click Arrange > Layout Guides.  The Layout Guide window will pop up.

Depending on which version of Publisher you are using, the following options may be either on three separate tabs within the window, or displayed as in the picture above.

• Changing the Margin Guides moves the margin guidelines.

• Grid Guides lets you create a grid of guidelines.  Use the small arrow buttons to change the number of columns and rows.  In Publisher 2003 or later, once you add columns or rows, you will also be able to adjust the spacing between them.  Publisher uses the spacing value to determine the height and width of the rows and columns. 

• If the spacing value you enter for a given number of columns or rows is not large enough to cover the entire page, Publisher will insert filler columns or rows to make up the extra space.

• Baseline Guides (only Publisher 2003 or later) are horizontal guides to help line up text.  You can set their width in the Layout Guide window.

Showing and hiding guidelines

If you have added guidelines, and they aren’t appearing, you may need to turn them on in the View menu.

• Click View > Boundaries and Guides (or [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[O]) or View > Baseline Guides (or [Ctrl]+[F7]).  If you do not see these options on the menu, click the double arrow at the bottom of the menu to expand it.

• To turn on a guideline, make sure there is a checkmark beside it on the menu.  To turn it off, make sure the checkmark is gone.

• Turning off Boundaries and Guides will also turn off the boundary lines around objects.

Snapping and nudging

• Using snap, you can automatically align objects to the ruler mark, guideline, or other object closest to where you place the new object.  Turn snap-to on or off by clicking Arrange > Snap, then selecting the option you want to turn on or off.

• Turning snap options on while using gridlines can help you keep objects strictly in line with on another and with the gridlines you set up.

• If you want to have freer control over where objects go, you may want to turn snap options off.

• Use nudge to make small adjustments to the position of objects.  Select the object, then click Arrange > Nudge > Up (or the direction you want to move the object).  The object will move a small increment in that direction.  You can also hold down [Alt] and use the arrow keys to nudge an object.