Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with microsoft and design

Making a monthly events calendar using seat-of-the-pants design!

soviet sleepover — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:54:27 -0800

I need to make a template for an in-print events calendar, and I'm not sure what the best way to approach this project is. Advice please! I've offered to create a monthly calendar template for a fantastic small nonprofit that I've worked extensively for in the past. My usual design style is a seat-of-the-pants combo of cut&paste and ill-suited Microsoft products, but because I have to hand this over to someone, I'd like to make it a little less haphazard this time. Help me figure out the best way to accomplish this!

The end result should be a monthly calendar to be distributed in print & maybe .pdf form. It needs to be designed in a commonly available Microsoft product (or open source equivalent; i.e. InDesign won't work), and should automatically populate the calendar with correct dates (probably a pony feature, I know!). It doesn't need to look glossy or high-dollar (their extant aesthetic is decidedly scrappy), but it'll serve as publicity for the organization, and needs to look eye-catching and interesting. So I can't just point them in the direction of a free Microsoft Word calendar template available somewhere online. Data can be entered "by hand," or drawn from iCal (there are few enough events that either are fine).

I'm reasonably tech-savvy (for someone who doesn't own InDesign, I guess), and so are the people who'll be updating/creating the calendar on a monthly basis. So kludges and workarounds are totally fine as long as they're simple (we're all familiar with--and do a pretty good job of--low-fi graphic design).

I'm not sure where to start, so I'm mostly interested in gathering ideas for how to work within the limitations (my own knowledge gaps, creating a simple low-work resource for whoever updates it in the future). Any suggestions or advice would be fantastic! So would any points in the right direction, any anecdotes, any chatfilter disaster stories of your own!

Quick and easy solution for reformatting Word documents from manual formatting to Styles?

Jacqueline — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:14:07 -0800

Quick and easy solution for reformatting Word documents from inconsistent manual formatting to Styles? I am helping someone combine 5 Word documents into 1 book with consistent formatting, a Table of Contents, chapter-specific headers and footers, page numbering, etc. If it matters (for text formatting) the documents are all in French. There are 300+ pages.

Problem: The original source documents were all manually formatted (inconsistently!) and thus each one seems to have 100+ different Styles, with only a few (or sometimes one) instance of each Style. The original document authors also did other fun things like use tabs or spaces to position text instead of tab stops or indentation.

Right now it appears as if I will have to go through the document page-by-page, reformatting the text into a consistent set of Styles. Or wipe out all formatting and start from a clean slate. Is there a quicker, easier way to do this or are we just screwed?

If we are screwed, do you think that wiping out all the formatting and applying Styles to the unformatted text (using the original documents' appearance as a guide for different sections, header levels, etc.) would be the fastest way?

I am using Word 2007 and she is using 2003, are there any 2007 formatting features I should avoid because they won't be backwards-compatible?

(Also, I am relatively new to working with Styles in Word so any other large document design/formatting tips you'd like to share would be much appreciated! :))

Please let me know, thanks!

It works for 99% of our visiters

2bucksplus — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:30:08 -0800

I made what I think is a great website for my company using Microsoft FrontPage. However, I have received a few complaints about accessibility and am wondering how to proceed. I know Frontpage is a terrible product in terms of standards compliance, but it got the job done (I thought) and it allowed me to make a 20+ page website quickly and according to my design, making me look like a hero around the office. My boss and coworkers are also pleased with the website and it allows me to frequently update our site as we see fit.

Since our site has gone live we have received a few complaints, specifically that it does not work in Firefox and on handheld browsers and that increasing the font size (for easier reading) "breaks" the website.

We looked to webdesign firms and professionals, but we quoted in the neighborhood of $4,000 (this is for local NYC firms) which is sadly out of our range.

Is there a better program I should be using or are there settings I should use in Frontpage or Expression web? Is there any way for me to "strip" the website of IE specific coding? Is is feasible for someone or something to clean up the website code for a reasonable price?

Good resources for report design

relucent — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:55:54 -0800

Where can I find examples of great report design for Access or Reporting Services? When I say "report", I mean Microsoft's broad usage of the word: a page layout in Access or SQL Reporting Services that displays data in a readable format suitable for printing.

My company's software relies heavily on reporting for all output of data, and right now our reports are poorly designed. They don't look pleasing to the eye and the data isn't arranged very well. This is a big problem, because the software will be printing out documents that a company would want to retain for a long time (employee records) and so it's important that it doesn't look amateurish. We use both detail-style (single record) and summary-style (listing) reports, but I would say the design of the detail reports is more important to the software than the listing reports.

My job is to redesign our reports for consistency, quality, and space efficiency. I have a lot of experience in user interfaces and web design, but not page layout! Are there any good resources out there for report design? I don't care about technical stuff, but I am looking for guidelines, common practices, and especially lots of examples.

Books or web sites welcome, as well as any MeFi wisdom...

Arial or Times New Roman? Single spaced? Bold?

billtron — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:08:07 -0800

Who wants to share their favorite MS Word 2003 Style themes for writing academic papers? I am a terrible typesetter. All my writing looks ugly and I don't have time to learn LaTeX before May.

How do I flip my textbox?

szechuan — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 23:00:02 -0800

How can I flip text horizontally, without converting it into a picture? I've been charged with creating invites for our firm ball. I am trying to print the image and text onto transparencies, but in reverse (or mirror image), so that you will look at the shiny "non-printed" side.
Ideally, I'd like to just group my text and image, and flip horizontally. But that seems beyond the capabilities of any of the MS Office products I'm stuck using (Publisher, Powerpoint, Word...) Google seems to confirm that you need to convert the text box into an image to flip it horizontally, which results in a degradation of quality, and the inability to mailmerge the names on the invites (preferred, but not compulsory).

Anyone think of a way around this? I don't have access to Photoshop on our standard office machines, but could probably arrange it if that's easiest. Or is there some simpler way I'm missing to print in reverse?

I figure there must be t-shirt printing Mefites out there who know how!

Why is MS Access coloring all my text fields grey?

Tubes — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 00:35:37 -0800

Working on an MS Access 2000 record-browsing form; the text fields all display as dark grey text on light grey background, no matter what colors or transparency are specified in the design. I've never seen this before. I've been running in circles for 2 hours. What am I missing?

What is the best and/or most efficient website design software these days?

Servo5678 — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 06:48:55 -0800

What is the best and/or most efficient website design software these days? Here at the office we're (finally) ready to dump our old Microsoft Frontpage-based website and move on to something better. The problem is that with so many options out there I'm conflicted on just what software to suggest. I'm looking for advice on just which website editor is worth the time and money these days.

As far as funtionality goes, we want to be able to link our still-in-development project database to the new site so that when users check on project information the latest data is displayed on the site (project budgets, contact person, etc.). Our first idea was to just build a database in Microsoft Access and use Frontpage to bridge everything, but I'd much rather go in a different direction.

Any advice for me? What are the favorite web design software packages these days? How about linking a database to a website?

Is it possible to convert or otherwise use Photshop plugins from Windows to Mac?

ooklah — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 13:54:50 -0800

Is it possible to convert or otherwise use Photshop plugins from Windows to Mac? I have lots of legacy plugins and effects from the old Windows PC here at work. We switched to Mac but many of the plugins are not available for Mac.

Anyone have any recommendations of firms that do UI makeovers? What could I get for around $5,000?

stupidsexyFlanders — Mon, 03 May 2004 05:48:34 -0800

UI design question -- I have a Windows application, basically a frontend to a database, whose interface has mututated over the years, through various "enhancements," to the point that it's almost unusable by the non-technical people for whom it exists. Anyone have any recommendations of firms that do UI makeovers? What could I get for around $5,000?