Creating print files from Microsoft Word 2007
This instruction does not guarantee the correct creation of your print files. Rather it is intended as an assistance. If you are not familiar with how to create print data and use this instruction, we recommend that you order a data check at a charge as an extra option to your order.
Office programs are generally not suitable to create professional print data. But as many of our customers use these programs during their daily office work, these tools are often used for the layout of smaller print products.
As questions often come up in this context, we have set up a small guide that describes how to create printable data from Office programs. We demonstrate the procedure in Microsoft Word 2007 using the example of a standard DIN-Long flyer as you can order at www.onlineprinters.co.uk.
Creating a document
After you have created a new document, first specify the page dimensions using the "Size" button which you find under the "Page layout" menu item.
The final format of the DIN-Long flyer is specified on the corresponding product page under "Details". It is 10.5 cm x 21.0 cm.
Here you will also find the note on the file format including the 2 mm circumferential bleed. You need this bleed as tolerance for cutting your products. The final file format is thus 10.9 cm x 21.4 cm. Enter the dimensions as paper format into the corresponding fields.
In the "Page borders" tab, you will find the settings for the page borders. Position writing and important information such as logos, addresses, etc. that must not be cut off so that there is sufficient clearance distance to the edge of the final format (10.5 cm x 21.0 cm). We recommend 4 mm margin clearance to the final format on each page. (attention: a different recommendation exists for advertisement systems and brochures. Go to the Details of a product for more information). To this adds 2 mm bleed tolerance per page which must not contain any important information as they are cut off. This results in a clearance of 6 mm to the document format margin (10.9 cm x 21.4 cm). We recommend defining this measure as margin. This allows you to use the remaining space.
Elements such as images or backgrounds which should reach beyond the final format edge, such as for instance the logo bar shown below, must reach 2 mm beyond this edge, that is they must reach up to the file format edge.
Placing text and images
You can now begin to configure the actual layout of your document.
We generally recommend our customers to use the colour mode CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) for image files as these are also the printing colours used later on. Office programs are primarily designed to display documents on the screen. This colour mode is thus not available in these programs. Word converts all data (also picture data already available in CMYK) in to RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colour mode. To print your products, however, we need the CMYK colour mode which is why we convert your data. Since the RGB colour range is much larger (it simply contains more possible colours) than the CMYK colour range, colour shifts can occur. This primarily concerns highly saturated and brilliant colours. Your Office program will thus not provide a true colour representation of your print data as we will perform the final conversion. The printed colours may therefore appear slightly darker and duller.
Moreover, your pictures should be in the file formats *.tif or *.jpg and have a resolution of at least 300 dpi (dots per inch) in the original size. If you do not have an image editing program, you can verify the resolution in Windows Explorer, by right-clicking on the file, selecting "Properties" there and clicking on the "Advanced" button under "File information".
Should you need assistance for positioning your design elements, you can show rulers and/or grid lines in the "View" section.
Output as PDF
Before saving your finished document as PDF, make the following setting. Use the round button in the upper left section of the program window to open the "Word options".
Please make sure that the "Embed fonts in file" checkbox in the "Save" section is enabled and that the two subitems are disabled. Without this setting the fonts you are using in the PDF document are not transmitted to us and we cannot correctly process your document. You can make this setting also before you create your document and specify that it applies to the "All new documents". This is obviously recommended when you are creating print data in Word on a regular basis.
Subsequently you can save your document as PDF. To open the corresponding dialog, again use the round button and click "PDF or XPS" in the "Save as" section.
The below window subsequently opens. Please select PDF (we cannot process XPS unfortunately) as "File type" and next click "Options".
Configure the window that opens as shown in the following and subsequently confirm with "OK".
You now return to the previous view. Click "Publish" to save your PDF.
We recommend that you review the created PDF visually. For this purpose, we recommend the free Adobe Reader which you can download from http://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/.
Please note that you cannot open and edit a PDF document in Microsoft Word. Its sole purpose is to transmit your print data to us. Therefore, you should save your document in Word file format *.doc in regular intervals, during and after the layout. You can do this using the round button under "Save" or "Save as". You can open and edit this file again and again.
We wish you much success with the creation of your print data and promise you that we will process the order you have placed at www.onlineprinters.co.uk in top quality.
Your Onlineprinters team