Question 1

How to use the Manual mode in Easy Puzzle Books (plugin for Powerpoint)

Accepted Answer

This tutorial explains the Manual mode in Easy Puzzle Books (plugin for Powerpoint)

Overview of the Manual process

The "Manual" way of creating puzzle books consists of a number of steps:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/N5EaNwfdcq/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20044%20-%20Manual%20Panel.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books 044 - Manual Panel.jpg)

Some of the steps are identical to the "Auto" approach, some are different:

Select Puzzles - Select puzzles and solutions (identical), and set up the placeholder codes for the puzzles (optional)
Create Puzzles Page - Set up the grid (identical), and Create the Puzzles template slide (new)
Create Solution Page - Set up the grid (identical) and Create the Solutions template slide (new)
Select Slides (New) - Select which template slides to use for puzzles, and which for solutions
Create Puzzle Book - (identical)

Step 2 and 3 include creation of the template slides, and manually editing (changing) them. This diagram illustrates the steps.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/QeCv0UcQaB/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20050%20-%20Manual%20Overview.PNG (Easy Puzzle Books 050 - Manual Overview.PNG)

Placeholders

Part of this process is creating "Placeholders" that will be replaced by puzzles and puzzle titles later. There are three steps that affect the placeholders. For Easy Puzzle Books this is mostly automatic, because there's only one puzzle type involved. The three steps are shown in this diagram:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/8J40NaqEh7/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20051%20-%20Manual%20Placeholders.PNG (Easy Puzzle Books 051 - Manual Placeholders.PNG)

Set up Puzzles - As part of the puzzle setup, you can specify the specific placeholders for the puzzle. There are four different placeholders: Puzzle, Puzzle Title, Solution, Solution Title. Each of these will be used in the template that you can edit.
Create Grid - A new slide will be created that contains placeholders for the puzzles, solutions and titles.
Create Puzzle Book - Will create as many copies of the template slides as needed, and replace the placeholders with the actual puzzles, solutions and titles.

The diagram below shows examples for the different steps. We'll cover all of these in detail.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/BLxUQcVCL3/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20052%20-%20Manual%20Examples.PNG (Easy Puzzle Books 052 - Manual Examples.PNG)

Set up Puzzles - Placeholders

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/qHVgFjX8da/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20040%20-%20Manual%20Placeholders.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books 040 - Manual Placeholders.jpg)

The tab "Titles" in The Puzzle Setup window will let you edit the Placeholders. As you can see, there are four of them, Puzzle (Image), Puzzle Title, Solution (Image), Solution Title. These are the four different items that will be placed on your puzzle pages.

There's a "Placeholder Code" which is set to "%%" by default. However, if you need to use "%%" in your titles, you can set it to a different value.

You can also set the number of Puzzles per Page and the number of Solutions per Page. For example, if you want to create a 2x3 puzzle grid, you'll have 6 puzzles and 6 puzzle titles on a puzzle page.

To keep track of which title belongs to which puzzle, they are numbered: {Puzzle Title 1} belongs to {Puzzle 1}, {Puzzle Title 4} belongs to {Puzzle 4} etc. (See the example screenshot in the next paragraph).

Remember: These are just temporary numbers on a page. For example, the third page with puzzles that's generated in step 5, will have replace {Puzzle Title 1} with "Puzzle 13", and {Puzzle 1} with the image file for puzzle 13.

Note: If this dazzles your mind, just remember not to edit these placeholders.

Create Grid and Edit Layout

You can set up the grid just like you did for "Auto", but in this case you need to click "Create Grid" to actually create a template slide. With a 2x3 grid, it can look like this:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/NTqUsi9n1K/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20041%20-%20Manual%20Create%20Grid.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books 041 - Manual Create Grid.jpg)

Here you can see the 6 different placeholders for puzzles, and 6 for puzzle titles. (You'd see the same type of placeholders on the solution template.

As long as these placeholders remain in place, you can completely change the look and feel of this template slide. For example, change the position of titles and puzzles, change the font and color of the titles. You can also change the size of the puzzle placeholders.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/equTmkIObX/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20042%20-%20Manual%20Edit%20Grid.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books 042 - Manual Edit Grid.jpg)

You could even copy the template slide and remove some of the puzzles, to have 2 puzzles on the first page, and 4 on the second page.

You can repeat this step for the Solution Grid, so you'll end up with at least one Puzzle Page Template, and one Solution Page Template.

Select Slides

You can create 1 or more template slides for the puzzles, and 1 or more tempate slides for the solutions. That means the plugin cannot really know which is which, and you have to specify which slides to use. (That means you can even create one master Powerpoint file with all your templates, and just select the ones you need for this session).

When you use more than 1 template slide for puzzles or solutions, you can also include slides that do not have any placeholders, but other text, images, etc.

In the screenshot below we've used 1 puzzles template slide and 1 solutions template slide:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/sJRcL1WK2t/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20045%20-%20Manual%20Select%20Slides.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books 045 - Manual Select Slides.jpg)

First select the puzzle slide (or slides) in 'Slides Pane'. In the example that's slide 2. With this slide selected, click the green "Set Puzzle Slides" button (Step 4).

Next select the solution slide or slides. In this example that's slide 3. Click "Set Sol Slides".

You can now see a small status text (the red rectangle in the screenshot): "Selection P 2 S 3". P is for Puzzles, S for Solutions, the numbers are the slide numbers.

Create Puzzle Book

Just like in "Auto" mode, you can select whether you want to collate the puzzles and solutions, and whether you want the puzzle book to be created as a new Powerpoint file. Click "Create Puzzle Book" to use the slide templates and create your book. Here's an page created with the template from the earlier example:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/Q1T3DIbT5P/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20043%20-%20Manual%20Puzzles%20Page.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books 043 - Manual Puzzles Page.jpg)

Final remarks

Feel free to play with the options, and it's best to make a lot of mistakes and learn from them. (That's what I do as well).

The selected puzzle files and titles, and the grids, are shared between the "Auto" and "Manual" workflows. That means that you can start with an "Auto" approach, see how the puzzle book turns out, and if needed, use the "Manual" to finish the product.

Puzzles / Solutions per Page

The settings for Puzzles per Page and Solutions Per Page is part of the puzzle settings, but it can be adjusted when creating the grids: If you set it to 1, and the grid is 2x3, you'll need 6 puzzles / solutions per page. It will be automatically set to 6. (It's only adjusted when CREATING the grids, not in other steps)

However, there's no automatic check later on, so if you manually adjust these numbers, e.g. set the Puzzles per Page to 4, you may get an incomplete set of puzzles in your book, or worse, you get duplicates.

An example: For the first page, the first puzzle number will be 1. Then 2, etc. For the second page (more precisely: the second copy of the puzzles template slides, the first puzzle number will be 1 + the number of Puzzles per Page. When the Puzzles per Page are set to 4, the second page will start with puzzle 5. When Puzzles per Page is set to 8, the second page will start with puzzle 9.

If you use a grid with 6 puzzles on a page, the first example (with 4 puzzles per page) will result in duplicates, while the second example (with 8 puzzles per page) will never print puzzles 7 and 8.

Question 2

How to set up the Page Format in Easy Journals or Easy Puzzle Books

Accepted Answer

This tutorial explains the Page Setup options for Easy Journals and Easy Puzzle Books (plugins for Powerpoint).

Overview

Trim Size is the official term for the size of your book. When you create books for Amazon / KDP, you can use a fixed number of trim sizes, when you create printables, it's best to stick with a common printer paper format in your country (e.g. Letter for the USA, A4 for Europe).

It takes a couple of steps to set the right Trim Size in Powerpoint, and it actually has a different name, because originally Powerpoint was not intended for books.

The "Page Setup" tab can be found in the Easy Journals plugin and in the Easy Puzzle Books plugin.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/cy3o11TTbK/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20030%20-%20Page%20Setup.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books 030 - Page Setup (1).jpg)

Trim Size

You can set the trim size in inches. Click "Set" and it will be applied to your current Powerpoint file immediately.

Margins

Powerpoint doesn't support page margins (because it's created for presentations, not pages), however it does support guides... the dotted lines that help you to align shapes and text.

You can use the Page Setup to add lines for your margins: Set the proper margins in inches, and click "Add Guides".

Note: these margins have a specific color, that will help the Page Setup to remove / replace them when you change the trim size.

Presets

When you've set up the trim size and margins, you can reuse these settings by saving them as a preset (at the top, just below "Page Setup". You can also load presets.

Get from Powerpoint

A final option on this page is "Get Current", which will retrieve the current page format from Powerpoint (the slide height and width), and update the Trim Size settings. This can help you if you're not completely sure wether you set the Powerpoint size to 8"x10" or 8.5"x11".

Question 3

How to Set Up Your Grid for Easy Puzzle Books (plugin for Powerpoint)

Accepted Answer

This tutorial shows how to set up grids for Easy Puzzle Books.

Overview

With the Grid Editor you can set the number of columns and rows, in the red square in the screenshot below.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/ZZnqxTZb4Y/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20020%20Grid%20Editor.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 020 Grid Editor.jpg)

Columns sets the number of puzzles next to each other (horizontally). Rows sets the number of puzzles below each other (vertically).

The grid will be determined by the trim size of your book and the type of puzzle: A 8.5"x11" sudoku book, can easily have 2 columns and 3 rows, unless you want to use a large font size. A coloring book usually has only one image on each page (1 column, 1 row).

Outer Margins

You can set top, bottom, left and right margins that will be excluded from the puzzles area. These margins can be, but don't have to be, identical to the page margins you've set elsewhere.

However, if you want to add additional text, embellishments or other content on your page, you can use the Outer Margins to specify where the puzzles should start. For example: If you place a 2" image or text at the top of each page, you can set the top margin to 2" or 2.5".

Inner Margins

Inner Margins, or padding, is the empty space between columns and rows. In most cases you'll want at least 0.1", or better 0.25", to add enough space.

Square Shapes and Alignment

By default, the grid will divide the available space on the page into a grid, based on the columns and rows settings. This will usually create rectangular placeholder shapes. In many cases, such as sudoku, most word search puzzles, etc, puzzles are square, not rectangular. You can use the option "Use Square Shapes" to create square shapes instead of rectangular.

The six buttons below the "Use Square Shapes" option set the alignment for the text and images: Left - Center - Right and Top - Middle - Bottom. This will determine where square shapes will be placed but also where puzzles will be placed inside the shapes, if the format is not identical to the shape.

Note: For "Auto", these settings will be applied in the background, since there will be no visible placeholder shapes. For "Manual", these settings will be applied to the placeholder shapes only. Once you create a book in "Manual" mode, it will only use the placeholder shapes, not the grid settings.

Title Space

For each puzzle there's a "Title" and an "Image" (the image is the actual puzzle or solution).

When you create a grid, for example with 2 columns and 3 rows, there will be 6 areas. Each of these areas will contain a title and a puzzle. By default, the top 20% of the area is reserved for the puzzle. In some cases this will be too much, and you can adjust this to get the perfect layout for your books.

Note: Once you have found a good layout for a certain type of puzzle and a certain trim size, you can save these settings as a Preset, allowing you to reuse the settings each time you create those books.

Examples

In the examples we used a page size of 8.5"x11"

"Auto" 2x3 Grid

In "Auto" mode, the grid you specify will not be created visibly, until you create a book.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/HMcyXSulkB/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20021%20Grid%20Example%201.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 021 Grid Example 1.jpg)

In this screenshot you can see we've set the interior margins to 0.25", for a grid of 2 columns and 3 rows. The result is shown below:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/Xqgw5GV3OR/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20022%20Grid%20Example%201%20Result.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 022 Grid Example 1 Result.jpg)

This page was created using a set of sudoku puzzles. As you can see, the space between the columns is far more than 0.25", because the puzzles are square, and centered in the available space for each grid location.

In this case, the titles may be placed a bit too far from the puzzles (which is a matter of taste and design best practices).

Let's reduce the title space to 10%:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/EOdDPo6Gt2/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20022%20Grid%20Example%201%20Result%202.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 022 Grid Example 1 Result 2.jpg)

"Manual" 3x4 Grid

In this second example, we'll use a 3x4 grid, and set the title space to 15%.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/qM3kgAfcYA/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20024%20Grid%20Example%202.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 024 Grid Example 2.jpg)

"Use Square Shapes" is not selected for the first results, and look at the screenshot below:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/bwrhnMGsTC/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20025%20Grid%20Example%202%20Result%201.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 025 Grid Example 2 Result 1.jpg)

The shapes are rectangular, and there's 0.25" space between the shapes.

The next example has "Use Square Shapes" switched on, and you'll quickly see the difference.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/XCdevgkb67/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20026%20Grid%20Example%202%20Result%202.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 026 Grid Example 2 Result 2.jpg)

Note: In the "Manual" mode, each of these blue shapes will be replaced by a puzzle image. If the puzzle does not have the same format (square or rectangular with the same ratio), it will reduce the size of the puzzle image to make it fit inside the blue placeholder.

Note 2: The placeholders in these images are blue because that's the default setting for Powerpoint on this computer. You may have other settings. The color is not important, because the shape will be replaced by a puzzle later on.

Question 4

How to Set Up Puzzles and Solutions for Easy Puzzle Books (plugin for Powerpoint)

Accepted Answer

This tutorial shows how to set up your puzzles and solutions to create a puzzle book with Easy Puzzle Books.

Puzzles and Solutions

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/HQSKL5ABpv/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20004%20Select%20Puzzles%20-%20Blank.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 004 Select Puzzles - Blank.jpg)

The screenshot shows the empty Puzzle Files window. This is what it will usually look like when you start, unless you have used a preset already.

You can click "Add Puzzles" to add puzzles, and "Add Solutions" to add solutions. Pretty easy, right?

The puzzles and solutions will be displayed in the list. Especially for the first few puzzle books, it makes sense to verify that the proper puzzles and solutions are matched.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/TozOU08WIX/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20005%20Select%20Puzzles%20-%20Details.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 005 Select Puzzles - Details.jpg)

In this screenshot you can see that a number of puzzles and solutions have been selected. Each line contains < P>: showing the puzzle file name, and < S>: showing the solution file name. When you click on each line, a message box will show you the full path for the puzzle and solution.

Note: When you use presets, you'll get a warning "File Not Found", if your list of puzzle files contains files that cannot be found. For example when you've deleted the files or moved them to a different location.

For Automatic book creation, you can skip the next two paragraphs.

Titles

Select the "Titles" tab to see more information:

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You can edit the Puzzle Title, Solution Title and Number Symbol here. For Automatic book creation, these settings will be identical to the settings in Step 4. For Manual book creation, this is where you should edit the settings.

In the screenshot, the lower part of the window is greyed out. This is what it looks like when you open this window from the "Auto" tab.

Placeholders for Manual Grid Creation

Please read the Manual Puzzle Books tutorial first, otherwise these settings will not make sense.

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For Manual Puzzle Books creation, you'll first create one or more Powerpoint slides with placeholders for the puzzles, puzzle titles, solutions and solution titles.

This will allow you to create a nice layout, changing positions, sizes, fonts, colors, etc. In the grid, you'll see (or use) names like {Puzzle Title 1}, {Solution 3}, and so on.

These codes - "Placeholders" - are needed to tell the plugin which titles and puzzles belong together. Once the copy and replace process begins, it will replace {Puzzle Title 1} with "Puzzle ##", and replace "##" with the current puzzle number.

For Easy Puzzle Books, it's not really important what these names are, as long as they not identical, and there's a number included. Therefore it's best not to change the settings.

For Mixed Puzzle Books Pro, these placeholders should be unique, to separate the different puzzle sets in your puzzle book.

Question 5

How Can I Create Books with Easy Puzzle Books (plugin for Powerpoint)?

Accepted Answer

Getting Started

This tutorial explains the steps to create puzzle books using Easy Puzzle Books (plugin for Powerpoint).

If you are using Puzzle Maker Pro, you can quickly create puzzles and puzzle books with a single mouse-click. However, there is a lot of puzzle-software available - free and commercial - that only creates the puzzles, not the books. That's where Easy Puzzle Books comes in. (It may not work properly with certain Puzzle Maker Pro puzzle types, such as Word Search or JigSaw).

Install the Plugin

First of all, you'll need to install the software: Easy Puzzle Books is a plugin for Powerpoint - it requires MS Windows and MS Powerpoint to be installed on your computer. It does not work with the cloud (browser) version of MS Office / Powerpoint.

If you haven't installed the plugin yet, you should do that first. There's a tutorial for downloading and installing the plugin here.

Start the Plugin

To start Easy Puzzle Books, open the "Add-ins" ribbon in Powerpoint (this is a menu option, usually just to the left of the Help Menu).

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/c2xd7twyDJ/Add-in%20menu.jpg (Add-in menu.jpg)

The Add-ins ribbon should contain the BookPublisherTools group of options. Click "More Options" to open the dropdown menu, and select "Easy Puzzle Books".

Easy Puzzle Books - Overview

The Easy Puzzle Books plugin will open a panel at the right (just like the shape edit panel in Powerpoint). The panel has three tabs:

First things first: Page Setup

Always set up the page size first, otherwise you'll be generating grids and puzzle page in the wrong format later.

Automatic Book Generation

As you can see in the screen shots, there are 5 steps to set up and create your puzzle book:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/5Bfobqk8LA/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20001%20Auto%20Overview.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 001 Auto Overview.jpg)

At the top of the tab page is a "Preset" section: You can save the entire book setup as a preset, and retrieve it later. This will NOT save the Powerpoint contents, and saving the Powerpoint file will NOT save the Easy Puzzle Books data!

Step 1: Set up the puzzles

Select puzzle and solution files on your computer for your puzzle book. Click the green button "Select Puzzles". More details can be found in the Puzzle Setup Tutorial

After selecting the puzzles and solutions, you should see the status information next to the green button.

Note: For Easy Puzzle Books it's not required to enter a name for the set of puzzles.

Step 2: Set up the Puzzles Grid

Easy Puzzle Books will use a grid-style layout for your puzzles, e.g. 1 per page, 2x2, 3x4, etc. Click the green button "Set Up Grid (Puzzles)" to set up the number of puzzles per page and the margins and padding. Details can be found in the Grid Setup Tutorial

When the grid setup for the puzzles is done, the selected grid size should be shown next to the green button.

Step 3: Set up the Solutions Grid

There are two options for the solutions grid:

It can be identical to the puzzles grid. Click the "Use Puzzles Grid" option and make sure it's checked. This is usually the best format if you want to create a solutions page right after each puzzles page;
Set up a separate grid for the solutions - for example you can have 6 puzzles on a page and 12 solutions on a page

Setting up the solutions grid is done identical to the puzzle grid.

Step 4: Set Titles for Puzzles and Solutions

The next step is setting your titles for the puzzles and solutions. This is totally up to you.

The "Number Symbol" can be changed as well - this is a placeholder in the title that will be replaced with the right puzzle or solution number, when the book is created.

Step 5: Create Puzzle Book

The final step is to create a puzzle book, using the settings specified in the previous steps.

There are two options here:

Collate - Print the puzzles first and the solutions later. if unchecked, it will print a puzzle page, then a solution page, then the next puzzle page, etc
New Powerpoint File: It's possible to create the puzzle pages in a new Powerpoint file. It will automatically copy the page setup (width and height) from the current file. Otherwise the new pages will be appended at the end of the current Powerpoint file.

Example

To show you what it can look like, this screenshot shows the setup for a sudoku puzzle book with 50 puzzles. The next screenshot shows the pages that have been generated in Powerpoint.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/6V8BnXxAlR/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20002%20Auto%20Filled%20Overview.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 002 Auto Filled Overview.jpg)

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/w0H7dOeaq4/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20003%20Powerpoint%20Example.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 003 Powerpoint Example.jpg)

Next steps

In many cases the automatic puzzle book creation will be just what you need. It's fast.

Once you have a configuration that works for you, with the proper grid sizes and margins, you can even save the entire setup as a preset, to use for several books. Each time you create a new book, you can load the preset, and change the puzzle and solution files.

It's possible to have many presets, for example if you publish different book sizes or different puzzle types.

Manual Puzzle Book Creation

With Easy Puzzle Books you can also customize the grids, page style, fonts, etc before filling the templates with puzzles and solutions. This is called Manual Puzzle Book Creation. You can find a tutorial here.

Question 6

Creating Templates with Journal Filler - Video Tutorial

Accepted Answer

This video shows you how to set up template slides in Powerpoint with Journal Filler

Question 7

Easy Journals Pro video tutorial

Accepted Answer

This video shows you how to quickly create low content books with Easy Journals Pro Plugin for Powerpoint

Question 8

How can I quickly set up lines, squares or dots for my journal using Journal Filler Plugin for Powerpoint?

Accepted Answer

This tutorial will show you how to quickly fill a shape in Powerpoint with lines, dots or squares.

As you know, each 'page' in Powerpoint is called a slide. That's the terminology we will use in this tutorial.

Overview

The Journal Filler Plugin for Powerpoint will save you time with two different options:

To use the Journal Filler Plugin, click on the "Add-ins" option in the Powerpoint menu. This will open the Add-in ribbon, that includes the "BookPublisherTools" options. In the "More Options" menu you can find "Journal Filler". This will open a new side panel in Powerpoint.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/c2xd7twyDJ/Add-in%20menu.jpg (Add-in menu.jpg)

Add lines to a shape with Journal Filler

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/qDKcXOE391/Filler-Lines.jpg (Filler-Lines.jpg)

Adding lines, squares, dots or little plusses to shapes is straightforward:

First, make sure you're looking at the "Lines" tab in Journal Filler.

Choose the fill option you need:

Horizontal lines
Vertical lines
Both (horizontal and vertical lines), resulting in squares or rectangles
Dots
Plusses

Depending on your selection, you'll need to set the Vertical and/or the Horizontal distance between the lines or dots. You can choose to either:

Set a fixed distance between the lines or dots (in inches)
Set the number of lines you want, e.g. 5 lines. The plugin will calculate the line distance for you when you click 'Go'

There are some presets for the line distance, such as medium ruled, wide ruled, 5 per inch, etc.

Once you're done, select one or more shapes that need to be filled, and click "Go".

Question 9

How can I quickly set up a layout with the Journal Filler Plugin for Powerpoint?

Accepted Answer

This tutorial shows you how to quickly create a tight layout in Powerpoint using the Journal Filler Plugin for Powerpoint.

As you know, each 'page' in Powerpoint is called a slide. That's the terminology we will use in this tutorial.

Overview

The Journal Filler Plugin for Powerpoint will save you time with two different options:

Quickly fill a shape with lines, squares or dots (see: Lines, squares or dots)
Add new shapes to set up a layout quickly (this tutorial)

To use the Journal Filler Plugin, click on the "Add-ins" option in the Powerpoint menu. This will open the Add-in ribbon, that includes the "BookPublisherTools" options. In the "More Options" menu you can find "Journal Filler". This will open a new side panel in Powerpoint.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/c2xd7twyDJ/Add-in%20menu.jpg (Add-in menu.jpg)

There are two ways to add new shapes on a slide (or on several slides)

Add shapes on a blank slide - this will create new shapes with black/white colors only
Set up a shape on your page, and use that as a template for new shapes.

Add shapes on a blank slide

An easy way to get started with your journal or planner layout, is by adding a basic layout on a blank slide. With a blank slide we mean a slide that does not yet contain any shapes or other things.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/UUTYtulvDt/006%20Empty%20Blank%20Slide.jpg (006 Empty Blank Slide.jpg)

As you can see in the screenshot, we've used Easy Journals to set up an 8.5"x11" page layout, and to add guides for the 0.5" margins. (These guides are not required for Journal Filler.)

At the right you see the Journal Filler plugin, where the "Shapes" tab is selected. Here you can:

Set outer margins, that you don't want covered with shapes. You can set this to 0 (zero), to 0.5" for KDP margins, or to larger sizes to create a specific layout. For example to keep the top half of the page empty.
Set Interior Margins, the margins between your shapes. You can specify the horizontal distance between columns, and the vertical distance between rows
Set the number of rows and columns.

In the example we create 3 columns x 3 rows, with 0.1" margin between the rows and columns, and 0.5" margins on the outer borders. This will result in a new layout like this:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/qtC7QP8VC6/007%203x3%20for%20Blank%20Slide.jpg (007 3x3 for Blank Slide.jpg)

When you create shapes on a blank slide, the shape fill color is white, the border line will be black, and the font color is black as well.

You can also use custom colors and font settings for your shapes, by starting from a 'template' shape:

#Add shapes from a 'template' shape

Or... you may want to use specific color settings - a rose gold background with a purple script font and green borders.

Journal Filler will let you replicate (copy) the shape you create with the exact same settings.

Step 1 - Set up the shape format, position and size

First you add a shape to your slide. For journals and planners you'll probably use squares, but you can use stars, arrows, etc as well.

You can change the colors, font style and font color as you wish. In the screenshot below we just used a white background with black borders:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/chogcVIhdF/Filler-Squares.jpg (Filler-Squares.jpg)

To be honest, these four squares have been created from a larger square.

Step 2 - Set up the number of shapes you want

Journal Filler will create the specified number of shapes in the place of the selected shape. If you set the number of rows and columns both to 2, you will end up with 4 shapes, each approximately 50% of the height and width of the original shape. (It will apply the Interior Margins you set).

Step 3 - Add the new shapes

Now you can select the shapes you want to use as templates (1 or more) and click "Add" to add the new shapes.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/BuZqZa6IpQ/Filler-Smaller-Squares.jpg (Filler-Smaller-Squares.jpg)

In this screenshot you can see the result after:

Selecting the top left and bottom right squares, and selecting 1 column and 2 rows, then clicking 'Add'
Selecting the top right and bottom left squares, and selecting 2 columns and 1 rows, then clicking 'Add'

Using Ctrl-Z you can undo all the changes made by the plugin.

Step 4 - Customize and embellish

After you've created this basic layout, you can manually change, resize and edit the shapes any way you want. These are 'just' Powerpoint shapes.

Question 10

How Do I Install the Powerpoint Plugins?

Accepted Answer

Here's a generic step by step guide to install Powerpoint plugins.

#1 Download the file

The first step is to download the Plugin file and save it on your computer. Usually that's as simple as clicking the download link. You can find this on the download page that has been emailed to you, or in the member area if you are using a paid plugin.

After this you should have a file named BPT-Easy-Journals.zip, possibly including a version number, in the Downloads folder on your computer.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/BWgLerx0Mc/Plugin%20Install%20001%20-%20Zip%20File.jpg (Plugin Install 001 - Zip File.jpg)

#2 Extract the files

The next step is to extract the files from the zip file, or 'unzip' the file. You can do this by right-clicking the filename and then select "Extract Here" or "Extract To".

Warning: Do not just double click the filename. This will let you browse the contents (that's fine) without unpacking it. You cannot install the plugin unless the files have been extracted from the zip file.

In the screenshot below you can see the result of "Extract Here" - The zip file contains a folder "BPT-Easy-Journals" that will be created on your computer.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/2YHUR1GoPg/Plugin%20Install%20002%20-%20Folder.jpg (Plugin Install 002 - Folder.jpg)

#3 Find the Files

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/LAOOSDHeG2/Plugin%20Install%20003%20-%20Files.jpg (Plugin Install 003 - Files.jpg)

#4 Start the Setup

Warning: You'll need to keep this folder in the same place, otherwise Powerpoint won't be able to find the plugin files later.

Powerpoint will show you a confirmation message:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/vZACmHpdXP/Plugin%20Install%20004%20-%20Confirmation.jpg (Plugin Install 004 - Confirmation.jpg)

It will say "Publisher: Core Insights". That's the registered company name of BookPublisherTools.

After this step you can use the plugin in Powerpoint, as described in other tutorials.

#5 Troubleshooting

In 99% of the cases, the installation will work properly. However, if you find it doesn't work, here are the solutions to the most common problems.

Certificate not trusted

The software certificate is comparable to the certificates used on websites for https (the secure internet protocol). It is used to 'sign' the sofware and ensure that it has not been tampered with.

There are two reasons why this error may occur:

Other errors

There have been a few other types of errors, all of which have been fixed by re-downloading or re-installing the plugin. If that doesn't work, please contact us.