REDMOND, Wash., March 28, 2001 — With the upcoming release of Microsoft® Publisher 2002, Microsoft Corp. will increase the potential of desktop publishing for small and medium-sized businesses without increasing the skills necessary to create professional sales and marketing publications. Publisher 2002 incorporates many of the popular productivity and ease-of-use features of the Microsoft Office suite and the new Office XP. It also offers new design templates, expanded commercial printing options, and enhanced Web and e-mail publishing features.
Recently released to manufacturing, the seventh edition of Publisher is scheduled for commercial release before the second half of 2001.
Businesses that have tested beta versions offer strong support for Publisher 2002, as does the president of NewEntrepreneur.com.
“The bottom line: No other page-layout program offers the same combination of ease of use, design integrity and creative flexibility as Publisher 2002,”
said Roger Parker, who is also a best-selling author, consultant and educator.
“For businesses that can’t afford or don’t have time to work with a professional designer but still want to look good in print, look no further than Publisher 2002.”
Building on its 10 years of experience with Publisher, Microsoft has overhauled the product’s look by adopting the new user interface of Office XP, the new version of the world’s leading office software. The streamlined interface offers consistency between Office and Publisher, incorporating popular Office features such as customizable toolbars, Print Preview, and headers and footers while supporting and expanding Publisher’s publication design features. The increased ties with Office also allow users to open, edit and format basic Microsoft Word documents within Publisher via one of several new onscreen Task Panes, and more easily import text and control formatting with the Office Clipboard and new Paste Options smart tag.
“A vast majority of our customers already know how to use Office,”
said Katie Jordan, product manager for Publisher at Microsoft.
“Now they can put that experience and knowledge to work when they use Publisher. This will allow new and longtime users to more easily take advantage of the wealth of tools available in Publisher.”
Publisher 2002 features an expanded selection of preset design options and Internet publishing tools. In addition to 8,500 unique layout templates, users can choose from 15 additional Master Design Sets, coordinated groups of page layouts and other elements that can be applied to almost any type of publication. The new sets, created by professional designers for more refined business documents, bring the total number of Master Sets to 35. In addition, Publisher 2002’s support for HTML makes it easier for users to publish and maintain documents on the Web, as well as send a publication as an e-mail message or attachment.
Microsoft also has expanded the commercial printing options in Publisher 2002 by adding features requested by professional printers. These include the ability to use as many as
12 spot colors in a publication — as opposed to three in Publisher 2000 — and support for process color and spot color in a single publication.
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The combination of new Font Schemes, enhanced Color Schemes and expanded design sets virtually guarantees that no two publications created with Publisher 2002 will resemble each
other,
“Parker said.”
Associations and businesses of all sizes will be able to create publications that reflect their unique image.
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“MSFT”
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