Over at the Microsoft Publisher Facebook page, they've asked readers to comment on which Publisher template is the best. I urge you to go over and comment on your favorite Publisher templates, why you like them, and how you use them, as well as maybe what templates you want that you can't find.

Or of course, you could sign in and leave those comments here; that would work, too.

-- Bob deLaubenfels

In a previous post I asked you how you wanted Help workflows delivered. Did you want a story? A roadmap of links to step-by-step instructions? A video of the process? A training course? Thirty-six people responded and 42% said that video was their preferred method.

Today I'd like to get your input on what you like about Help videos.

One of the main uses of Publisher is to take publications to commercial printing companies. Publisher makes this super easy with the Pack and Go Wizard. The Pack and Go Wizard creates a compressed file that contains everything that your commercial printer needs.

Mother's Day is this Sunday, and Publisher has templates to help you create your own personalized card for your mom.

As always, start with one of our Mother's Day card templates, or any card template that comes closest to what you want. Then customize the card by replacing the image with something special to your mom, maybe a picture of the two of you, or perhaps an image of something that really speaks to about your relationship with your mom, or something you've created yourself. Then change other elements, such as the colors or fonts, and print the card in time to give it to her on Sunday.

You can find Mother's Day images on Office.com as well as several other places on the Web.

-- Bob deLaubenfels

The end of the school year is fast approaching. In addition to looking forward to school getting out for the summer, some of you might be thinking about running for student council or class officer. From campaign banners and posters, to flyers and newsletters, to campaign bumper stickers and buttons, Publisher can help you with your campaign. 

Much, maybe most, of what we do in Publisher is designing and laying out our publications. Aligning text boxes, pictures, borders, and clip art to make a pleasing and compelling presentation. The tools for laying out your publication are margins, guides, and align. Today I'm going to talk about margins and guides.

Most Help is written for a specific feature or procedure, such as this article on cropping pictures in Publisher 2007. But this shows only part of a larger task, which might include inserting a picture, cropping it, adding captions and effects, aligning it on the page, and so on.

 Here's an example of a roadmap style article on manipulating images in Publisher 2010 that does start with inserting the picture to cropping, to adding to a shape, and finally resetting the image to remove any formatting you've added.

Watermarks are text or pictures that appear behind document text or that appear on pictures or other images to show copyright. You can use text, WordArt, pictures, even clip art. Pretty much anything can be used as a watermark.

Earlier this month I posted parodies of famous authors, Tom Clancy and then Raymond Chandler, writing Help for Publisher and asked what other authors you'd like to see writing Help. KarinH suggested Hemingway, Marquez, and Sedaris. Here's my version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez writing Help...

 Scenario-Focused Engineering is how we are approaching designing the next version of Office. The goal is to make the experience of using Office revolve around what you, our customers, do with the applications; to do our best to design through your eyes. This extends right down to writing Help; we plan to deliver scenario-based Help in the next version of Office.

In thinking about this, I wondered what kind of scenario writing most appeals to people using Publisher and Office generally. In the past we've tended to use scenarios in writing fairly technical IT deployment Help, such as these business intelligence scenarios, or these SharePoint 2003 scenarios, or roadmap articles like this one for SharePoint 2007 that wraps a set of articles into a coherent organization. For the Information Worker audience we've produced some scenario-based videos, such as the Office Intervention series. And I've put together a roadmap style article on manipulating images in Publisher 2010, but we haven't had a consistent philosophy about scenarios and Help.

So, my question to you is, what do you want from scenario-based Help?