High-end packages also let you create multiple master pages to serve as templates for complicated documents.
Desktop publishing packages can usually export to all major PDF types. For example, if you need crop marks on pages, Microsoft advises you to export your Word document to Publisher, the Office desktop publishing app. Word can’t do everything a high-end desktop publishing program can do. There are, however, different types of PDFs, so make sure to check with a printer beforehand-ask if they can work with the PDF format generated by the Word version you are using. Most commercial printers who work with small businesses will accept documents in PDF format, and Word lets you save documents as PDFs. Here you can find features for aligning objects and bringing them in front of or behind other objects. If you’ve added several elements to a document and they aren’t behaving the way you want, you might find help in the Arrange section of the Page Layout tab. You can realign objects in Word with layout options. For example, you can flow text into columns simply by selecting it all and clicking on the number of columns you want in the Page Layout tab. Many of Word’s tools can be applied on the fly, so if you don’t like the way something looks you can easily change it. If you want your images to have captions that aren’t numbered, you have to either create a text box below (or beside) the image just for the caption or put them both in a box to tie them together, another complicated procedure.
You can add captions to graphic elements using the Insert Caption feature in the References ribbon, but there’s a catch: Because the feature was intended for academic publications, it automatically assigns numbers to them (in sequence)-and it’s all but impossible to get rid of them in print unless you want to go into Word’s field codes. Use a text box to create unnumbered captions. To make the change permanent, you click on the desired element. (Once you select a theme, the colors in the palette will show up when you click the Font Color icon on the Home ribbon.) You can experiment with different looks by hovering over a theme (or, for that matter, any other design element in the ribbon), which is then applied to the appropriate area in your document.
You might choose one color from a palette for a border and another for subheads, for example. The Design tab also provides collections of color palettes and effects you can apply to add character to your layout. You could, of course, specify these individually as you work, but the fonts in a theme are chosen and sized according to generally accepted design precepts so they’ll look good together. You might also want to click the Design tab and choose a theme-a collection of fonts for popular layout options such as titles, subheads, and plain text. If you prefer to start from scratch on a blank sheet, you can set up page dimensions, margins, columns, and other basic defaults in the Page Layout ribbon. But even if you want to change design elements (such as fonts, for example), you might start with a template just to pick up preset margins and other basic layout parameters that would be annoying to create from scratch. Templates come pre-populated with images and dummy text, both of which are easily replaceable with your own (you can either click on a block of text and start typing, or paste in text or images you’ve previously copied to the clipboard). Word has hundreds of templates to jumpstart your layout.