Need help creating a church newsletter

[MaryL]

I have a lot of experience with WordPerfect but not with Word. I agreed to
take on the task of preparing our church newsletter. That will involve some
full-page text, some columns, and inserting some pictures. I am using Word
2007 but will have to save the newsletter to an earlier version for our
church secretary (probably using Word 97-2003 document under "save as"). I
experimented by creating a template. However, that saved to the *.docx
extension, and she could not open it. So, I plan to just use a master copy
and copy-and-paste on top of that.

I have two basic questions (so far):
First, are there any templates in MS that I could look to as guides? If so,
where would I find them?
Second, I can't even find "help" to start me off in looking up information.
All of my other programs have a help file in the upper-right corner, but it
is not in that location in my copy of Word. Where would I find it?

Using: MS Office Word 2007 running under Vista Home Premium.

Thanks,
MaryL

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Help is still in the upper right corner: it's the circled question mark. But
don't count on it much;even if you enable online help, you still don't
always get a satisfactory answer.

Also, it is possible to save as a .dot template (you just need to scroll
down in the Save As dialog to find that option). You can also set Word 2007
to always save in Word 97-2003 format, which will be helpful for your
output.

You can find newsletter templates in the template gallery at
http://office.microsoft.com/templates/default.aspx?, but many of them use
text boxes in ways that aren't really all that helpful for the sort of
newsletter you describe.

 

[Mazie]

I have a lot of experience with WordPerfect but not with Word. I agreed
to take on the task of preparing our church newsletter. That will
involve some full-page text, some columns, and inserting some pictures.
I am using Word 2007 but will have to save the newsletter to an earlier
version for our church secretary (probably using Word 97-2003 document
under "save as"). I experimented by creating a template. However, that
saved to the *.docx extension, and she could not open it. So, I plan to
just use a master copy and copy-and-paste on top of that.

I have two basic questions (so far):
First, are there any templates in MS that I could look to as guides? If
so, where would I find them?

Go to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx
and search for "newsletters". There are a lot there, even if
most are for versions of Publisher.

Second, I can't even find "help" to start me off in looking up
information. All of my other programs have a help file in the
upper-right corner, but it is not in that location in my copy of Word.
Where would I find it?

Can't help you there as don't have Word 2007.

Mazie

 

[Terry Farrell]

Mary

Just in case you have found this yet (you would be one amongst many
thousands that didn't find this), if you click on the pizza slice (Office
button) in the top left corner of the Word screen, it opens a menu that
looks like the old File menu (it also opens using Alt+F like a real File
menu) and there if you select NEW, you will find masses of pre-installed
templates including a group called Newsletters.

 

[MaryL]

Thanks, everyone -- you provided fast response and very helpful information.

MaryL