Question 1

How to create an Instant Puzzle Books with custom margin settings

Accepted Answer

In this tutorial we'll set up a puzzle book layout with different settings for left and right pages.

Step 1 - Set the puzzle options

In this example we'll work with Sudoku, which is one of the easiest puzzles to create - since there's no need to set up a word list or other input.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/5PqtIUAORB/1%20Set%20Puzzle%20Options.jpg (1 Set Puzzle Options.jpg)

We'll create just 2 pages, with 6 puzzles in total, to illustrate the layout options.

Step 2 - Set the Desired Output Type

In this case we'll create a Powerpoint file and a PDF.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/x7hOz2ziqj/2%20Output%20Type.jpg (2 Output Type.jpg)

Step 3 - Set up the Page Format

The next step is to set up the Page Format and the Margins.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/TGtbmgjGsS/3%20-%20Page%20Settings.jpg (3 - Page Settings.jpg)

1 - The Page Format or Trim Size

In this example we'll set it to 8.5"x11". You can use any trim size you want. However, with smaller trim sizes and large margins, there will not be much space left for the actual puzzles and solutions!

(For puzzle books generated with Puzzle Maker Pro, there's no need to use Bleed, unless you set the margins to zero. Normally the puzzles will be placed within the page margins, and not in the margins and bleed area.)

2 - Top and Bottom Margins

You can set these as desired.

3 - Left/Right Margins

Let's say you want different margins for left and right pages, because you want a larger gutter margin. In that case the "Left" Margin setting is used for the outer margins (left margin on the left page, right margin on the right page), and the "Right"setting is used for the inner margins (right margin on the left page, left margin on the right page).

To illustrate this in the output, we'll set a really large inner margin of 1.5".

4 - Mirror Margins

By default, if you would create a PDF or Powerpoint file (that can be exported to PDF with Powerpoint), the first page would be a right page (the front cover), the 2nd page would be a left page, etc.

However, if you use different margins for left and right pages, it's important to specify which page is the first one. However, if the first page is not a 'right' page, you'll have to add a cover page to your PDF or Powerpoint file manually.

We select "Mirror Margins", and unselect "First is Right Page". That means the first page is a left page, and you'll have to add the cover page later.

These are the settings to create different left/right margins in your puzzle book.

Step 4 - Page Layout

The final part to set up is the page layout:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/VFqrWNpxgb/4%20-%20Page%20Layout.jpg (4 - Page Layout.jpg)

Here you can set the number of rows and columns for the puzzle pages (1) and for the solution pages (2).

In addition to that, you can specify the padding (distance) between the puzzles (3). In this case it's set to 0.1"

Step 5 - Create

After setting the different options and settings to your taste, click "Create". Puzzle Maker Pro will now create the puzzles for you, and create the Instant Puzzle Books from those puzzles.

Here are screenshots of the Powerpoint results (first image) and PDF results (second image, only two pages shown).

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/EuQdeQCyv5/5%20-%20Result.jpg (5 - Result.jpg)

Question 2

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

Accepted Answer

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

Overview of the Manual process

Using Mixed Puzzle Books with Manual Layout adds a few steps to the Automatic process:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/WS53HEptbA/Mixed%20Puzzle%20Books%20020%20Manual%20Layout%20Overview.jpg (Mixed Puzzle Books 020 Manual Layout Overview (1).jpg)

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

Select Puzzles - Select puzzles and solutions
Set up the Puzzles Grid (this will be used to generate the template in step 4)
Set up the Solutions Grid (this will be used to generate the template in step 4)
Create the Template Pages for your book
Define the Templates to use - you have to tell the plugin which slides are the puzzles templates and which slides are the solutions templates
Create Puzzle Book

In addition to that, you have to click the "Use Manual Layout" box to make sure the settings are used.

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)

Step 1: Select Puzzles

This is step is identical for Automatic Layout and Manual Layout. A tutorial can be found here.

Step 2: Set up Puzzles Grid

This is step is identical for Automatic Layout and Manual Layout.

Step 3: Set up Solutions Grid

This is step is identical for Automatic Layout and Manual Layout.

Step 4: Create and Edit the Template Pages

For both the Puzzles template and the Solutions template, there are three things you need to do:

Step 4.1: Specify the number of puzzles for the template

The number of puzzles does not have to be equal to the grid size, because you can select more than one page (slide) for the template. For example, you could choose to create different 'left' and 'right pages.

For example, if you have a 2x2 grid (4 puzzles on a page), you could choose to have 4, or 6 or 8 puzzles in the template. (or any other number!). If you choose a number larger than 4, you'll need multiple pages. By default the nur of puzzles is set to the grid size.

Step 4.2: Create Grid Puzzles (or Solutions)

Click the green button "Create Grid Puzzles" (or "Create Grid Solutions") to create new slides with the specified number of puzzles.

The screenshot shows a grid with 3 rows and 2 columns, and Nr of Puzzles set to 6, so you'd get just 1 single slide.

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 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.

Summarized: The Grid Size (e.g. 2x2) defines how a basic grid will be generated, the "Nr of Puzzles" controls how many puzzles will be used on the template. (You can leave it to be identical to the default values)

Step 5: Define the Template Pages To Use

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/OfYHNVD1Ta/Mixed%20Puzzle%20Books%20021%20Puzzle%20Templates.jpg (Mixed Puzzle Books 021 Puzzle Templates (1).jpg)

The red arrows (right to left) show how the "Nr of Puzzles" determines the layout. The green arrows show the definition of Puzzle Template and Solution Template.

To do this: 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): "Puzzle Slides: 2" and "Sol Slides: 3". The numbers are the slide numbers.

Finish: Create Puzzle Book

The settings for the final step are identical to the settings for Automatic Layout. Click "Create Puzzle Book" to create slides (optionally in a new file) with your puzzles and your manual layout.

The screenshot below shows the results when you'd use 3 puzzles in the template, in an edited 2x2 grid, and 6 solutions in a 2x3 grid.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/atW1bl6YnS/Mixed%20Puzzle%20Books%20022%20Manual%20Layout%20Result.jpg (Mixed Puzzle Books 022 Manual Layout Result.jpg)

You can see one blue square: That's one of the placeholders in the template that was not replaced by a puzzle (because there were only 200 puzzles, this would be puzzle 201). You'll need to remove these additional placeholders manually.

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 suggested workflow, at least while getting started, is to set up the puzzles and the grid, and create a book from those puzzles. That way you can see how the puzzles work together when mixed. The next step can be to choose a different grid format, or to choose the Manual Layout.

Once you've create a couple of books, you'll probably have a couple of layout templates that work well for you, that can be reused (using presets).

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 3

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)