WordPerfect Office 12 Small Business Edition is the latest addition to the WordPerfect Office family of products. Designed specifically to fit the needs of small to medium sized businesses, the Small Business Edition has everything you need to produce professional-looking documents, manage finances, generate marketing materials and presentations, create graphic elements, clean up digital photographs and share information with clients and coworkers. See this article for more information on this exciting offering from Corel.

In a perfect world, we could play with our new software for a while, doing whatever comes to mind. In reality, a company on a budget needs to be able to produce materials that represent the company in a positive light. This tutorial will demonstrate how you can use the tools in the Small Business Edition to produce a company newsletter.

Launching Templates from the Task Manager
The Small Business Edition comes with two OfficeReady Solution Packs (a $89US value) – Business Plans and Business Essentials. Each solution pack contains a variety of templates that you can use to produce professionally-designed documents. The formatting and layout is already done, so all you have to do is fill in the blanks. What could be easier?

The Business Essentials solution pack has templates for business planning, marketing materials, correspondence, reports, presentations, scheduling, project tracking and more. In the WordPerfect Office 12 Small Business Edition Task Manager, the newsletter templates are found in the Marketing Materials category on the Tasks tab (see Figure 1).

The Task Manager for WordPerfect Office 12 Small Business Edition organizes the OfficeReady templates in categories on the Tasks tab.

There are four newsletter templates in the Business Essentials solution pack. The first template, Newsletter, allows you to choose from several different "looks". The other three newsletter templates are done in the Classic, Effective and Novel styles. These same styles are used for the brochure and postcard templates so you can produce documents with a consistent appearance.

Previewing Templates in the WordPerfect OfficeReady Browser
The Task Manager groups the templates together by category so you can quickly navigate to the right one. There is another method to select the templates – with the WordPerfect OfficeReady browser (also available through the Task Manager, in the Applications tab). You can browse through the templates and get a high resolution preview of what it looks like (see Figure 2) before you open it. When you find the one you want, you just double-click it. The associated application starts and the template opens up so you can get right to work.

The WordPerfect OfficeReady browser provides a high-resolution preview of the OfficeReady templates so you can quickly locate the template that you need.

Using PaintShop Pro
The Classic, Effective and Novel newsletter templates all have a placeholder for graphics. A well-illustrated newsletter will capture a reader's attention more than one with just plain text. Also, if you are trying to communicate a theme, a picture is the quickest way to do that.

You have lots of choices when it comes to adding visual elements to your documents. You can easily insert clip art from the WordPerfect Office 12 collection or from an online source – simply click and drag it into place. For those pictures that you've taken with a digital camera or scanned in with your scanner, you couldn't ask for a better graphics program than PaintShop Pro.

PaintShop Pro is an excellent value in image-editing software (see Figure 3). Priced at $99US for the full version, it has the same tools as applications valued at four times the cost. It's inclusion in the Small Business Edition is like an unexpected windfall. Even if you don't consider yourself to be "graphics savvy", you'll find that the editing features are straightforward and easy to use.

Use PaintShop Pro to clean up and resize your digital photographs before you use them in WordPerfect and Presentations.

You'll be able to edit your digital photographs to remove red eye, to sharpen, brighten and enhance photos and to add decorative borders. Photographs taken with the latest digital cameras have such fine resolution that the resulting files are quite large. Before you insert a picture into a newsletter, or email it to a friend, you should resize it into something more manageable. This is easily done in PhotoShop Pro.

PaintShop Pro can work with files in all of the popular formats, so the editing tools can be used on many different kinds of graphic images. Edit photos, create graphics, draw, paint and animate – the creative possibilities are endless. When you're finished, you can easily import the results into WordPerfect or Presentations.

Corel has a number of tutorials for PaintShop Pro on their web site. This tutorial shows you how to remedy the five most common problems that plague digital photos. This tutorial (in PDF format) shows you how to create and use picture frames. One of the most popular, this tutorial (also in PDF format) shows you how to get rid of those grainy specks that can taint your otherwise perfect photos with the Digital Camera Noise Removal Filter.

The PerfectExpert panel in the newsletter template uses buttons and short menus to help you add elements and adjust the formatting of the newsletter.

You can also add clipart from the Scrapbook, a graphic from a file, a table, a list, a watermark, or a table of contents. All without having to look through the menus for the correct command. It's fast and easy – perfect for the small business owner or employee on a tight schedule.

Publishing the Newsletter to PDF
When the newsletter is complete, you can opt to print it out and mail it, or you can publish it in a standard format and email it. The universal format for sharing files online is PDF, which stands for Portable Document Format. The PDF format is perfect for sharing files that will only be viewed or printed, but not edited. In fact, PDF files carry an extra measure of security because the recipient(s) cannot edit them. The file size is small so it is perfect for distributing via email.

The recipient will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the PDF file, but it is widely available as a free download, and version is 6.0 is included in the WordPerfect Office 12 Small Business Edition bundle.

WordPerfect has a built-in Publish to PDF feature that eliminates the need to purchase additional software, which can save you as much as $200US per machine. The Publish to PDF feature has been available since WordPerfect Office 2000 and it continuously updated to ensure maximum compatibility and the smallest file sizes possible.

When you are ready to publish your file in WordPerfect (or in Presentations), choose File > Publish To > PDF to display the Publish to PDF dialog box (see Figure 5). By default, the PDF style is set to standard desktop printing and viewing. You can also select highest quality or smallest file – it all depends on the result you want to achieve.

The General tab of the Publish to PDF dialog box has options for naming the new PDF file and selecting the PDF style.

Distributing the Newsletter via Email
When you are ready to send out your newsletter, there is no more efficient way than to email it to a distribution list. As it stands now, email is free so you save on postage. An added bonus is that email is almost instantaneous. When you send an email message, even if the intended recipient is halfway around the world, the message is delivered in a matter of minutes. Your message is sent out quickly, efficiently, with virtually no cost outlay.

The Small Business Edition of WordPerfect Office 12 comes with an exciting addition to the WordPerfect family: WordPerfect Mail (see Figure 6). This new application has everything you need to communicate with your coworkers and clients, keep track of schedules and maintain contact information. As with all WordPerfect Office applications, it is easy to learn, intuitive, powerful, and very flexible.

WordPerfect Mail has all the tools you would expect from a email application, including a calendar and contact manager.