How to create puzzles and puzzle books with Puzzle Maker Pro

Question

Accepted Answer

Puzzle Maker Pro can create puzzles, and additionally create puzzles books from these puzzles.

It is a two-step approach on purpose:

Create the puzzles and solutions using the settings you selected for your puzzles,
Create a puzzle book from the puzzle and solution files you created in step 1

How to create Puzzles

The primary function of Puzzle Maker Pro is to create puzzles for you.

You can set the the resulting image size and file format on the Output Settings / Puzzle Files tab, and set all specific puzzle settings on the Puzzle Settings tab.

Which files will be created by Puzzle Maker Pro?

For most puzzle types this will result in

A file containing the puzzle image in JPG or PNG format (in the project/puzzles folder)
A file containing the solution image in JPG or PNG format (in the project/solutions folder)

In some cases additional files will be created:

For Mazes, the SVG add-on will let you create the maze drawing in SVG format. This is an efficient vector format that can be used to display the puzzle on a web page, for further editing or styling in Adobe Illustrator, or to control cutter machines such as Silhouette
An XML file containing specific information about the puzzle, to use when you create puzzle books
A TXT file with the words used in a Word Search puzzle, and an additional file with the remaining words from your word list

You can use these files in any way you like. There is no obligation to create your puzzle books with Puzzle Maker Pro.

How to create Puzzle Books

After creating your puzzles, Puzzle Maker Pro will automatically create a puzzle book for you. Consider this a friendly gesture of Puzzle Maker Pro - it does not aspire to compete with professional book layout software such as Adobe Indesign, Affinity Publisher or Microsoft Publisher.

This is called "Additional Output". It will use the settings on the Output Settings / Additional Output tab, and the Output Settings / Page Format tab to create a PDF or Powerpoint file according to your specifications.

If you have set the options to create additional output, it will do so immediately after creating the puzzles (when you click the Create button).

How does the Time Saver fit in?

The Time Saver extension allow you to create puzzles a lot faster, by creating puzzles with different settings in one go. It speeds up Step 1 (see above). It will create puzzles for each setting you specified, and will create a puzzle book after all the puzzles have been generated.