Is MS Publisher scawwy?

[primsong]

Our church secretary has had to rather abruptly step down from the job due to her husband suddenly falling ill due to what turned out to be cancer. We naturally let her go! The end result, however, is a loose group of disorganized people with good intentions trying to cover all the various things she did. So far the only useful contribution I've been able to offer was to come in on Fridays to help fold and stuff bulletins, but it would be golden if we had anyone who could work with MS Publisher to keep the newsletter going.

SO... I haven't said anything yet, but I'm thinking I might try to tackle that one, newsletters/stuff to write and read being a trend in my life, IF Publisher isn't as boneheaded and irritatingly non-compliant with the wishes of the user as most Microsoft products are - in other words, if I can figure it out and make it do what I want without ripping out my hair.

That said, any of you use Publisher? Is it Stoopid and Recalcitrant? Or is it understandable and usable? I'm going to hunt for something like a tutorial online.

Comments

[kerravonsen]

It has been decades since I've used MS-Publisher, so I doubt I could be much help. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that it is a layout program, not a word-processor, so it's best to make sure that the content is the final version before you import it into MS-Publisher, because, while it isn't impossible to edit the text, it's not as easy as with a word-processor.

MS-Publisher does make it really easy to do layout, though. You can put your images where you want, and the text flows around them. You can do two-column or three column, and control the way the columns are presented. It's really rather nice.

(Mind you, if I were doing serious publishing, I'd use TeX/LaTeX/LyX because the TeX engine is the best for layout, and it does it all for you. But it's a different paradigm and not as "user friendly".)