Creating a Hardcopy catalogue

what software to use

[Andrew Thomas]

Not sure if this is in the right place but:

I need to create a hardcopy catalog of the products we sell.

Does anyone have any knowlege of how to accomplish this.

What software should i use The prices are stored in Access or Excel. So these need to be imported into the application for monthly price changes. Ideally everthing will be in the database (images and descriptions)

Im not sure if a web page would be OK, as the print quality would be poor (72 dpi) or am i wrong?

Is it possable to use Quark, and import the prices, or is there any dedicated software to produce catalogs.

The kind of catalogue im after is something like you get in the post from dabs.

Thanks

[vibgyor79]

Adobe InDesign or Adobe Illustrator. Quark is fine too.
You can download a trial version of Adobe software to check whether it suits your needs.

[Andrew Thomas]

thanks vib

But ive looked on these sites (adobe, Quark), and i dont think they will import the MS Excel or Access

Ive even looked for third pary plugins to do this but no luck.

Or do you know for sure that these products will import MS Excel/Access

thanks

[john316]

Hi Andrew

Will the catalog be black and white or full color?

[seofan]

Will you be producing the hardcopy catalog on your own equipment or will you be sending the files to a print shop? 4-color or bl/wh?

[andreasfriedrich]

You could use LaTeX and VBA from within Excel/Access to write the LaTeX code. The type setting quality is the best I´ve ever seen.

Andreas

[Nick_W]

QuarkXpress is pretty much the industry standard for this type of thing as I understand it....

Nick

[Andrew Thomas]

OK, its will be full colour and printed in-house.

Ive looked into Quark, but i dont think the information can be imported from MS products

[Macguru]

I definetly recommend using FileMaker Pro. You can import all you have in it, and make pretty decent presentations.

It takes some time getting used to it, but you could costomize an existing catalogue template in a matter of days. It is a multi-user database system, so many can read or edit content over a network. Up to admin to set up previleges.

[john316]

So, it sounds like you want to print hard copies from your computer and run 2 sided color copies, collate and assemble?

[Andrew Thomas]

yes john,

As ive said before, the main problem is finding the software that will allow MS products to be imported. As all the data and lots of it :) is stored in Excel.

The end result will be a product catalogue to be mailed to current and future customers.

[john316]

Macguru made a good suggestion that could work very well for you. You can export (or "save as") the excel data as csv, and import that into Filemaker.

From Filemaker you can format the output any way you see fit.

[Andrew Thomas]

John, Im a bit confused on what filemaker actually does.

Will this create the catalogue, or would i need to import the results from filemaker into something like Quark or adobe indesign

thanks

[Macguru]

FileMaker will let you print the catalogue. You can find some catalogue templates provided on the CD or online and edit them at will.

Chances are you will fall in love with it someday, and drop Excel. ;)

[stace]

I wouldn't rule out Adobe Acrobat- a lot of printers are accepting files in Acrobat now in addition to standard ones like Quark and Pagemaker. The nice thing about Acrobat is that you can later use the same pages or entire doc on the web, on a CD-rom, etc- with a lot of interactivity if you want (menus, links, sound, etc).

Quark will convert to Acrobat with a free plugin.

You should talk to your printer before choosing any program- they'll tell you what they accept, what dpi and margins to use, etc.

good luck!

[john316]

Filemaker is database software that is highly customizable.

[filemaker.com...]

If you are going from hard copy-->copier, you probably don't need anything as "industrial strength" as quark. You just need a way to import the data and format the output.

I don't know enough about the MS end of things to help much further.

[Macguru]

>>OK, its will be full colour and printed in-house.

This is why I jumped in with this suggestion. I run my little SEO agency around FileMaker.
Contact, prospection, fax, letters, phone, e-mail, billing, accounting, reports, custom management, just name it. Publishing a catalogue can be very easy with this thing when you get used to it. You can import access, excel or a full folder of pictures on the fly.

Independant reviews

[cnet.com...]
[pcworld.com...]

Ressources

[dmoz.org...]

It is a full fledge relational database management system that you can easily customize. Limitations are it can slow to a crawl when 50 + users are connected simultaneouly to the same file or when a file exeeds 2 gigs of data.

[pageoneresults]

You could also use MS Publisher [microsoft.com] which of course is a Microsoft product and merges information from other MS applications seamlessly.

[ade_uk]

the company i work for sends it from access->word->adobe acrobat->external printers