Send brilliant-looking, exciting Christmas newsletters from your family with Microsoft Office 2010 templates. Last week we showed you how to make Christmas Cards with Microsoft Word 2010 so why not add a newsletter with all your family’s news that will take next to no time to make great, the secret’s in the preparation:
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Involve the family in your Christmas newsletter
Don’t sit down and write three pages of dense text: your newsletter won’t be read. Microsoft Office 2010 has some simple free templates to make your Christmas newsletter look fantastic and all you have to do is find something to write about.
If you’re writing a family newsletter, why not ask your kids write a piece themselves? If your house is anything like some of the ActiveDad homes, teenage grunts will not make for great news but you might be able to commission them into writing an account of their exchange trip or scout camp.
What should you put in the Christmas newsletter?
We’ve been through a few that have already come our way and picked out some top tips:
Do choose exciting photographs. Rather than write paragraphs about running a marathon: just use a picture of the marathon runner with a short caption. “Harry at the Great North Run, 2,356th place”
Do ask your kids to write some of it. It’s your family newsletter so make sure they’re involved.
Don’t use the traditional cliches. If your daughter has passed an exam, the reader knows you are proud of her. Think of the things you hate to see in other people’s newsletters and avoid them in yours.
Do break up the Christmas newsletter with jokes or funny things your kids have said.
Don’t use exclamation marks after every sentence!!!! It won’t make the newsletter funnier or more exciting!!! Lol x
Don’t use text speak, (see above).
Do leave space to personalise it for each reader. You can do this by hand or edit it before you print each one.
Use Microsoft Office 2010 to make your newsletter great
Choose a template
Once you’ve got some news, fire up Microsoft Word 2010 and open a new document. In the middle of the window that pops up, you can choose to search the massive office.com library of free templates. We searched “newsletter” and chose a family Christmas newsletter template, remember to save it once you start writing.
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Use Word 2010 to edit your photos
You can insert a photo very easily using the “insert” tab but once it’s there, you’ll need to crop it. Clicking on the picture will offer you the “Picture Tools” tab at the top of the page. Whizz over to the right of the toolbar and you’ll find the option to crop your photo to a shape. You can trim the image to a boring old rectangle like we did on the front page or you can go wild with a huge selection of shapes.
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Compress your photos in Word 2010
This is a brilliant little tool, stay in the Picture Tools toolbar but on the left of the screen this time, you can reduce the file size of your cropped photos. This is vital if you’re emailing out your Christmas newsletter: a few uncompressed photos and it won’t make it to your family and friends’ inboxes.
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Your Christmas newsletter starts to take shape
Using our top tips, fill in the text. If your kids are writing straight into the newsletter and working on it with you, please make lots of copies as you work. Once you think you’ve finished, remember to proofread the Christmas newsletter. Start with the spell check (wiggly red line) and grammar check (wiggly green line – below). Ask your kids to check it for you, they will love being your editor and will enjoy it even more if you provide them with a big red pen to make corrections.
Find out more about Microsoft Office 2010 in the video below
Toddle image by Ernst Vikne