Bringing Publish and Publisher files into Layout by Zaweba

Plenty of layout work starts in simpler programs. A club newsletter made in Publish by Zaweba, a shop's old flyers made years ago in Microsoft Publisher, a back catalogue of menus nobody has opened in a while. When those jobs outgrow their first home, or the old program isn't to hand any more, Layout by Zaweba can take them on.

Opening Publish files directly

Publish by Zaweba is the simpler sibling: a page layout app for flyers, newsletters, posters, menus, certificates, cards, tickets and leaflets, with templates and text that flows through linked boxes. Its files, .ozp, open directly in Layout. There is no export or conversion step to remember; open the file and carry on.

That makes Publish a sensible place to start and Layout a natural place to move to. A newsletter that began as a simple two page sheet may grow into a sixteen page magazine with a contents page, a book of back issues and a press PDF for a commercial printer. At that point, the tools Layout adds, such as parent pages, paragraph and object styles, live preflight, CMYK and spot colour and book files, start to earn their keep.

Bringing Publisher .pub files across

Microsoft Publisher's .pub files come in through Pub Converter by Zaweba. Pub Converter opens .pub files and saves them as PDFs, page pictures or Publish by Zaweba publications you can keep editing, without needing any other publishing program installed. Saved as a Publish publication, the job can then be opened in Layout like any other .ozp.

Pub Converter reports what happened to each file: which fonts were swapped for ones on your PC, and anything that couldn't be kept exactly, such as WordArt turned into a picture or table borders that didn't come across. Pictures come out exactly as they went in, at their original resolution. Read that report before you start editing, because it tells you where to look first.

It can convert a single file or a whole folder at once, which suits anyone with years of old .pub files to bring across.

Tidying a converted job in Layout

A file that started in a simpler program won't use Layout's structure, so a little setting up pays off.

Make paragraph styles from the text as it stands, and apply them. Body text, headings and captions each get a style, and from then on the document is easy to change.

Move repeated items, such as a masthead or page numbers, onto parent pages, so they appear on every page without being copied.

Check fonts. Anything substituted in conversion should be replaced with the font you want before you start adjusting text, or line breaks will shift later.

Check pictures in the Links panel, and look at effective resolution if the job is going to a commercial printer.

Run live preflight and clear what it finds.

Mistakes to avoid when moving old jobs

Editing before fixing fonts is the main one. Settle the fonts, then edit.

Expecting a converted job to be perfectly structured leads to frustration. Budget time to set up styles and parents.

Skipping Pub Converter's report means missing the WordArt or table borders that changed. Read it.

Keeping a simple job in Layout when Publish would do is fine too. Not every flyer needs a professional layout app. Move a job when you need what Layout adds.

Old jobs, new life

Between Publish, Pub Converter and Layout, an old document is rarely a dead end. Simple jobs open directly, old .pub files come across with a clear report, and once in Layout they gain everything a professional layout needs, from styles to print ready PDFs.