Microsoft Publisher 2007

This is the ninth update that Publisher has seen since its first release back in 1991. It comes with all editions of Office from the Small Business Edition upwards, but can be bought individually. Designed for creating marketing materials such as brochures, catalogues, price lists and newsletters, it comes with a large range of templates you can use directly or customise to your needs.

Publisher hasn’t got the new Ribbon UI this time round, but it’s a prime candidate for it next time. The Office Themes feature seen elsewhere is only partially implemented in Publisher, possibly because its font and colour schemes are more complicated than would fit comfortably. You can, however, choose corporate standard colours, fonts and logos, which can be applied to every publication you create. You can create any number of business information sets for different brands, divisions or departments.

The “publish as XPS or PDF” facility (available as a download rather than built in, because of legal threats from Adobe) is well used here to provide low, standard or high-quality output suitable for use on websites, office printers or professional print shops. You can use the four-colour process printing, spot colour or CMYK composite PostScript. The improved Pack & Go Wizard gathers your graphics and fonts together with the Publisher file, ready for transport to a commercial printer.

Creating new documents is easy with a template library to browse or search, and a clear task assistant panel to guide you. Publisher will also merge to email, producing personalised marketing or newsletters, including bookmarks and personalised hyperlinks to track readers to your website. There are also links to Business Contact Manager to target sets of clients identified there and track a campaign’s effectiveness.

Compared to many of the other applications, Publisher 2007 is a minor upgrade, but it’s still worthwhile. With even more customisation options available now, virtually anyone can produce good marketing communications with little effort.