How to Make Cards on Microsoft Word

With the economy sinking faster than the Titanic there are times when you have to find different ways of saving a few dollars. While we all have tightened our belt and cut out those delicious mid-day donuts, there are some things that are often hard to cut back on; one expense that has grown over the years is the creation of brochures, documents and the purchase greeting cards

Thus finding out how to make cards on Microsoft Word, or how to make any other form of printable document such as an agenda, a calendar, other greetings cards or even brochures is going to save you a lot of money. How to make brochures on Microsoft Word deserves its own article, but the underlying principles remain the same as this article.

As an example, if someone has been kind to you, or sent you a gift, it’s always polite to send out a thank you card – but today’s Thank You cards can cost $5.00 or more for specialized cards; so why not save a few dollars and use Microsoft Word to create a Thank You card. You will be surprised how easy it can be.

The steps below show you how to create a card on Microsoft Word; in this case it’s a Thank You card, but the same method can be applied to the creation of any document using the templates available on Microsoft Word:

(This method is for Microsoft Word 2007 – the method will be similar for Microsoft Word 2003 & 2010)

Before you even open Microsoft Word, you should decide what type of Thank You card you intend to send. Is it a formal card? An ‘administrator’s week’ thank you card? A ‘Thank You for attending’ card?, or some other card?

For this example I decided that Simone Smith deserves a Thank You card for her hard work and dedication relating to the current ‘So you think you can write’ contest; therefore I am looking for a ‘Thank you for your hard work’ type of card.

There are hundreds of templates available on Microsoft Word and often finding the one you desire can be difficult. Microsoft Word does provide categories to make it easier, but there is an easier method:

• Open Word
• Click on the Office Button
• Click New
• In the search box type in ‘Thank You’ and press the search button – this looks like an arrow pointing right.

This will provide you a list of the available templates

• You can click once on one of these templates for a brief outline; once you have chosen the right template for you, click on download.
• I chose the ‘Photo Greeting Card – tree design’ – after downloading I am presented with the template ready to customize.

Some of the templates available in Microsoft Word do not require any customization, you can simply print them and send them. However, the majority of the templates will require some work to get the final card ready. (Brochures and other documents often require quite a lot of content to be inserted and unique photos). I’ve decided that while I could send the card ‘as-is’, I want to customize and personalize it:

The first thing I want to do is to replace the picture:

• Left click on the picture – this will add a ‘Picture’ reference box and some ‘circles and squares’ on the edge of the picture.
• Using the menus click the ‘Insert’ tab.
• Click ‘Picture’
• Browse to the picture you want to insert – you are presented with the format menu for pictures and can change the color, brightness and contrast if you wish.
• Once you are happy with the picture, click anywhere on the card.

Change the greeting messages

• This card comes with a generic ‘Thank You’ – clicking within the text allows you to amend the message and change the font, size, color etc.
• Moving to the second page I click on the ‘[Your message here or delete this text and add your own handwritten message.]’ and added a personal Note.
• The note I wrote was larger than the text box provided, so I used the square boxes on the side of the text box to expand the box so it fitted nicely in the card.
• At this point you can insert anything else as you desire, but for this demonstration I am happy. The finished design is cute and gets straight to the point.

Printing is easy, the hard part is choosing what paper to use. If you have a decent color printer you will be able to print in color on card and thus have a pretty decent card.

Print the card and follow the guidelines printed on top of the card “1. Print this page. 2. Print second sheet on the back of this page. 3. Fold paper in half. 4. Cut along the dotted lines. 5. Final trimmed size will be 5 x 7 inches.” For best results.

And there you have it, you’ve created your first Thank You card using Microsoft Word 2007, and you’ve saved about $4.50 while doing it.

(Note: the final card is featured at the top of this article)

Whether you are sending one card or multiple cards, using Microsoft Word to create and print the cards is an efficient and cost effective process. You don’t need to stop at thank you cards either; why not create your Annual Christmas Cards using a Word template, and include a current picture; you could create a spooky Halloween card; or you could even create a romantic Valentines card using a Word template.

The only restriction is your imagination – if you are clever enough you can even create your own cards without using a pre-defined template. Word is an amazingly versatile product and if you cannot afford top desktop publishing software, it can be used to create decent brochures and other marketing material.

Generally if you want to print a document, card, agenda or brochure then there is a template for it.

What other things can I do using Word Templates?

There are too many Word Templates to list them all here, suffice to say the best thing to do is explore the available templates. However, here are some examples of templates created using Microsoft Word: