I am designing a monthly newsletter for print (on our little hp printers) and e-mail (must be able to be printed from the e-mail and retain 2 page format.) I have to design the newsletter in Word and then send as e-mail, which isn't an issue (except for the fact that Word is not my choice of layout programs, being an Adobe girl) The problem I have is that it doesn't always retain it's format once it gets to Outlook, clip art and graphics are floating around. When I layout, I use text boxes and put the clip art and text in those and move them around. Should I be using forms instead? Also when I print it out, some of the elements print crookedly (which is really strange to me, because it was my impression that text boxes could be rectangles and squares, but not quadrilaterals).
The major problem is that some people complain that the newsletter looks wierd when they receive it via e-mail.
Since the company I work for has not supplied me with Adobe and will not allow me to use attachments, I am at a loss. In addition, the woman who designed this before me,apparently, never had this problem.
I have tried looking on the web and can't seem to find complete answers to all of this. Can anyone help me?
Thank you.

I had the same problem using Word/Outlook combination... we completely abandonded that, especially after our email list grew to 25,000+ emails....

Now we use a program called Anconia RocketSales for our emailing. It has a built in HTML editor for the emails, which we design in Dreamweaver and just copy and paste the code over to this program. Then it automatically puts the links and whatnot in the email, and it looks EXACTLY the same on like 95% of the emails we send! =)

Is there any reason that you wouldn't want to convert to PDF and send that? For size purposes, it should be about the same size or smaller than the Word formatted version.

It isn't immediately viewable like the email would be, but it'd be perfect for maintaining layout, fonts, etc.

Chris

Chris,
Thanks for the response. My boss and others want to do it the way the previous employee did it, no attachments. This company is really sort of strange about attachments. (see below) Plus I am using Word 2000 to compose all of this and there is no way, that I know of to save it as a .pdf anyway.
What I can't figure out is why I am the apparent idiot and the woman who did this before didn't have problems.
(It might just be the enviro here, too. I was interrogated when my computer crashed the first week. The IT guy wanted to know what kind of attachments I was opening. I was actually downloading clip art from Microsoft web-site. That sort of shut him up, but you get the drift. )
I am on my own and need to make sure this next newsletter is flawless.
Any brill ideas?
Thanks,
Gwen

Gwen,

IMHO, Seems like your company is ridiculous about this email thing.

A .pdf would accomplish what you need to do, you claim they will not allow you to send attachments, so that is out of the question. How can they expect you to make an email in word, paste it into an email client, and have it look like a million bucks and be effective marketing?

We use Constant Contact for mass email. I guess your company wouldn't mind spending more money with an email service. It may cost more, but at least you will not be sending attachments.

How about telling them, you need a Mac, that ought to get the IT guy in a good mood.

Rich,
Are you kidding? The guy in IT would have a heart attack. I ended up having to switch to Windows when I was selling gear motors, because everything was that platform. After my dad sold the biz, I went back to the travel industry. I am definitely not a geek, but this place is pathetic. Each computer has a diff type of Windows and diff versions of Office. We have a conx to Amadeus mainframe and everyone freaks when they have to work in Apollo or Sabre. It's totally amazing to me. When I worked for Alaska Airlines we used Pars, then Sabre and when we did ground handling for British Air, I think it was Apollo. Go figure.

I would love to have another Mac. Mac and Adobe are so intuitive. There are so many things about the Mac that are brilliant.

I think that what I will do is just lay the thing out in Word and send it from Word. Too bad about those other people.

Thanks for the quick reply.
Cheers,
Gwen

I was kidding about the Mac, just knew that would tick the IT guy off.

Sending it directly out of word is probably going to solve your problem. I hope it works perfect.