You have planned the perfect fundraising dinner; you have purchased all the right foods and your home or meeting hall is decorated to the tee. Now all you have to do is design the perfect ticket for this fundraiser dinner. No need to pay a printing company to design and print them. All you need is Microsoft's Publisher 2008 (or later) and some card stock paper.
Instructions
Designing the Tickets
1. Sketch out on a piece of paper what you would like to include on the dinner ticket. Think of possible clip art and photos. The normal size of a ticket is 8.5 inches by 3.66 inches. You can print them on 8 1/2 by 11 card stock.
2. Open Microsoft Publisher 2008. The first screen will list all available templates. Click on With Compliments Cards. The compliment card is a standard ticket.
3. Double click on any of the card designs. Note: you can change the card/ticket after you make your selection, so any of the cards will work.
4. Delete any design element you don't like. Keep at least one text box.
5. Type in your text first and then insert your clip art/photo. To insert a picture or clip art, click Insert, Picture then Clip Art to pick from Microsoft's Clip Art Gallery or From File to insert a photograph you have stored on your computer. Pictures and clip art can then be positioned on your card/ticket. There is even an option for scanning a picture into Publisher from under this Insert menu.
6. Click File, Save As to save your file after you are done designing the ticket.
Inserting the Sequential Tracking Number Printing the Tickets
7. Open Microsoft Excel. A blank workbook will appear. Determine how many tickets you will need to print. Type into each cell of Column A a number for each ticket you will print (you can start your numbers with 1, 2, 3, 4 or pick a random starting point like 11, 13 or 15). Each number will appear on a different ticket so you will have a way of tracking each ticket. Keep typing down Column A until you have a number for each ticket.
8. Click File, Save As. Name the file Numbers or something similar. Save the file in your My Documents folder. Click File, and Exit.
9. Return to Microsoft Publisher, click Mailings and Catalogs. Then click Mail Merge.
10. Click Use an existing list under the Create Recipient list heading on the left side of the screen (this is within a box labeled Mail Merge. Then click Next: Create or connect to a recipient list at the bottom of that box.
11. Double click on the filename of your numbers file. If you saved the file as Numbers, then double click on that filename.
12. Double click on C:\Document...\Numbers.xlsx or whatever name you saved the Excel file to. This will be under the heading Create recipient list. A box will appear next---Click Mail Merge Recipients. Click OK on the box. This box shows each number you entered into the Microsoft Excel workbook.
13. Click Next: Prepare your publication at the bottom of the Mail Merge box. Double click on the number located inside of the box under the heading Prepare your publication. An x will now appear within a box on your dinner ticket. You can position this box anywhere on the ticket. This is the placeholder for your tracking number.
14. Click on Next: Create merged publication. The first number of your set of tracking numbers will now appear in the placeholder box.
15. Double click on Print preview... under the Create merged publications heading. Each card will appear with a different number.
16. Load your card stock and click Print... to print your final cards.
Tips Warnings
Create the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet after you have designed the ticket. Save all files frequently.
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