Printing Photo Books with Microsoft Office

Tips and Tricks for designing Photo Book PDF's with Microsoft Office Applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Publisher

Designing Photo Books with Microsoft PowerPoint, Publisher and Word.

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A Word of Caution

While creating with Microsoft Office programs is not ideal, there are ways that you can successfully utilize these programs to help you with your projects. Ideally, an alternate program such as Adobe Acrobat would be our top suggestion, though we do understand that this may not be an option for some.

Microsoft's in-application PDF export feature has been found to be problematic for book creation because they do not adhere to standard PDF specs. If you create a project using one of these programs please ensure you follow our recommendations for creation to avoid major heartbreak!

Designing With Microsoft Office Programs

Below you'll find some basic information on each of the Microsoft programs that you can use for project PDF creation.

Microsoft Powerpoint Logo

PowerPoint

A program designed specifically for creating digital presentations. While not ideal for creating files for print, there are ways to set up your document to get the best results!

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Microsoft Publisher Logo

Publisher

A desktop publishing program focusing on page layouts and design. Precautions need to be taken when designing with this program to get satisfactory results.

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Microsoft Word Logo

Word

A classic word processing system for dealing with text heavy documents. Due to it's limited design capabilities, books with larger amounts of text are ideal.

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Microsoft Word Photo Book Templates

A Few FAQs

Our recommended PDF creation software is Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, or InDesign, as those programs are the most optimized for use in creating PDFs that are compatible for printing. Adobe offers a free PDF creator which allows you to create 5 free PDFs. We recommend your file be in its final form before you use one of the 5 conversions. You can find even more options at our PDF Creation Software page!

Yes, but proceed with caution.

One of the biggest issues with using Microsoft Office products to make a PDF is that it is not necessarily optimized for high quality PDF printing. There is a chance of some of the formatting being a bit weird in printing. These are things that we can't necessarily see or check for before sending your book to print - there's only so much we can do! If you’ve used one of those options to create your PDF, you can try running it through a program like Foxit or another PDF Creation Software and then uploading it. If you’re still worried you can always contact us to double check!

Uh oh, chances are you created your PDF in a different ratio than what you wanted. Generally, in this case you’ll need to go back to the drawing board (or PDF creation program) and adjust the size of your PDF to fit what you want. If you have questions about what size you’ll need to make your project you can always email us or hop on Live Chat!

Sounds like you might have saved your PDF using RGB images, rather than the recommended sRGB. It’s a pretty easy fix though! Just adjust the Colorspace in your PDF creation program to sRGB, save the file, upload over the existing project, and you should be all set! Check out our Color Specs page for some great information on this.