Article Entry

Newsletter Ease supports the creation of Articles and other Content to insert into your email. Articles integrate with a Template to help you focus on the content and free you from the overall design each time that you publish. To take advantage of Articles the Content tab of your Issue.

Then, click the Add an Article button.

You'll be prompted to choose whether this is a new article, or if you want to use an existing article. Each Article you enter is stored in the Content Bank, from which you can pull articles later for re-use.

The Content Window looks similar to other word processors.

Here, you can enter formatted text and pictures. The Article Window contains many functions. Here is a brief overview of entering a new article. Every article has a title you assign to it. This title will, by default, appear in your Issue. You can opt to hide the article title from appearing in your Issue by clicking Format > Show Title in the menu. After inserting the text, you might want to include a picture.

To hyperlink a section of text, highlight the text that you would like to set as hyperlinked and click the Insert a hyperlink button from the toolbar, or choose Insert > Hyperlink from the menu.

You can enter either an email address or the address for the Link (URL). Alternatively, Newsletter Ease will format an address for Mapquest™. When your audience clicks on the link, it launches a map in Mapquest to make getting directions a snap. Newsletter Ease offers built-in spell checking. This occurs automatically when clicking the Save and Close button .

Your new Article will appear with the other Articles already in the Issue. You can click and drag to reposition their order.

Click on the Preview tab to see your assembled Issue. As mentioned,

your Article Title will appear above the Article Body by default. There is also a link, Back to top, to reset the position of the email to the top of the page. This helps people navigate between the article list and the articles that matter most to them as they read.

Article Entry: Pictures

When you send an email with pictures in it, the pictures either need to

accompany the email or they need to be available online.

Sending pictures as attachments to an email adds to the size of the email, which

upsets some people and is against the email policy of some organizations who

limit attachment size. To ensure your pictures are viewable by as many people as

possible, Newsletter Ease requires you to upload pictures to a place online if the

picture is not already on the Web.

If you have a Web site, storing pictures online should be easy. The picture files

that Newsletter Ease uploads for you are typically small and won't eat up much

space on your Web server.

If you don't have a Web site, you probably have some Web space granted to you

when you signed up for the Internet connection you use. Most Internet Service

Providers provide space on the Web for their customers. You can use this space

for publishing your picture files.

If there is simply no way for you to access space on the Web, you can tell

Newsletter Ease to insert a picture already on the Web if you can find a suitable

picture for use with your article. (Remember, some of the pictures on the Web are

copyrighted, so use appropriate judgment.)

To insert a picture, click on the Insert a picture button on the toolbar, or

choose Insert > Picture from the menu.

From the Insert Picture window you can use previous pictures inserted into

articles, or you can Add Pictures .Aside from pasting a picture into your content, there are two sources for new pictures; your computer and the Internet.

Insert a Picture From Your Computer

First, find a picture on your computer. Next, click the Find a picture on your

computer pop-up menu.

Once you locate the picture, it loads into a window to help you to resize or crop

the picture.

This picture was a bit small, so by choosing the percentage by which to resize the

picture from the drop-down, the picture will now be larger for use with the Issue.

Clicking will prompt the upload utility.

If you haven't entered the details of how to connect to your Web site, you can do

so from this window. Once Newsletter Ease knows how to connect to your Web

site, enter the file name and upload it to your Web site. This returns you to the

first window where you can see your new picture selected.

If appropriate, create a hyperlink for this picture to a Web page. This allows

people who receive your Issue by email to click on the picture and go to a Web

page online.

Click and your picture appears in the Article

If you want the picture to be left justified and the text to flow around the picture,

begin typing the rest of your text after the picture, as you see here.

Find a picture on the Internet

From the Insert Picture window,

click the Find a picture on the Internet.

Enter either the address of the picture itself if you know it, or a Web page address

from which to start. We'll start with a Web page address.

You can view the Web page within this window and browse if you like. As you

move around, Newsletter Ease parses the HTML of the page to create a Picture

List from which you can select.

Once you select the picture that you want, you have the option of using it as is, or

adjusting it through the Crop/Resize window. Any adjustments you make will

require you to upload the changed picture to your Web site.

Occasionally, Web pages contain pictures broken into fragments. This means you

can't just point to a single file to get the picture that you need. Newsletter Ease

helps you with this through its Crop Page utility.

If you click the Crop Page button from the Browse tab, Newsletter Ease will

captures a screenshot and loads an image of the entire Web page into the Crop

window for you.

Select the section of the page you want to keep, and then crop the picture. This

too will require uploading the picture to your Web site.

A third way to pull a picture from the Internet is by typing the exact Web address

of the picture. Enter the picture URL into the Picture Location box and press

<Enter> on your keyboard or click the Go button .

Either adjust the image to fit or click .

If you click OK, Newsletter Ease downloads the picture and closes the window.

Article Entry: Tables

A table is a grid to help you organize content and make it more readable.

Newsletter Ease helps you to insert simple tables into your articles through the

Table menu in the content editor.

Click on Tables > Table > Insert to insert a table.

The grid at its center simulates the rows and columns of your table. If you need

more rows than what you see here, insert a table with just a few rows, and use

your mouse to place your cursor in the last cell of the table. Press the Tab key at

the end of the table to add as many rows as needed.

You can also insert other tables, such as two- or three-columns with dividers.

This helps to place some space between each column of text.

Tables make orgainizing pictures easier.

This works very well for displaying a lot of pictures, such as some real estate

agents do.

Column/Table Widths

To resize a column, move your mouse over the line of the column border and then

click and drag until you achieve the width you need.

If you need to bring the table back within viewable bounds because the outside

edge of the table got pushed out of the window, use Tables > Table > Widen

Table to Width of Page in the menu.

Similarly, you can evenly distribute the column widths within the table with

Tables > Column > Spread Columns Evenly.

By default, Newsletter Ease saves all table widths in percentages rather than

actual pixel widths. This means that if a person has a narrower view of your email

because of their screen resolution, your table will shrink accordingly. Likewise if

they have a high resolution, your table appears to be wider. If for any reason you

want all of the tables in an article to hold their width, use the menu item

Tables> Table > Use Exact Table Widths.

Table Borders

Tables have invisible borders. If you want the border to be seen, as when you

display numeric information in a grid, click anywhere into your table and choose

Tables > Table > Show Borders.

Inserting and Deleting

Delete a table by clicking into the table and then using Tables > Table > Delete

Table available through the menu.

The Row and Column menu items allow you to insert and delete a row or

column as needed.

Article Entry: Layouts

After using Newsletter Ease for a few Issues, you may find you use a certain

format of Article repeatedly. For example, maybe you always start out with a

three-column table, and then proceed from there. If so, you might want to take

advantage of Layouts. Save a style of article as a Layout, and then open the

layout each time you need it. Two menu items assist in this process: Save as

Layout and Open Layout in the File menu of the Content Editor.

Article Entry: Calendar Content

Newsletter Ease helps you to insert Activities from your Calendar into an

Article through Insert > Calendar Activities in the menu.

You select the day or a day in the week and click Insert.

Activities will be arranged in a table if you chose a Weekly Calendar. The

details of a day's Activities will be displayed if you chose a Daily Calendar.

Article Entry: Troubleshooting

My picture shows up as a red X when I publish to another computer.

This happens because the address is not valid for the picture.

If you uploaded the picture to your Web site:

- Your Web site could be offline temporarily. Try again in a few minutes to see if that might be the reason.

- Check your Web site settings to make sure that the Web site URL contains

"http://". HTML is incapable of showing pictures without this.

- If you have an FTP tool, such as Cute FTP or WS FTP, you might browse online

and see if the picture is in the location that you expect it to be.

Sometimes, it might be online, but not in the folder that you expected. If so, check your Change Folder setting and see if you might need to enter that.

My template become "stretched" when I preview it. Some of the words

in my article overlap or appear out of bounds when I preview it.

Your article may have a picture or a word that is too wide for the width you've set

in your HTML template. When this occurs, the HTML template uses fixed pixel

widths instead of percentages that can stretch.

You can reduce the size of the picture and re-upload the change. Be aware of the

width of the area into which you are inserting your picture. The crop tool in

Newsletter Ease or your own editor can help you keep the width of the picture

within bounds.

It may also be that you inserted a picture that is 300 dpi or higher. 300 dpi works well for printed pictures on paper, but not at all for the Web. You'll want to reduce the picture to 72 dpi. If it's a word that is pushing your content beyond the bounds, this usually happens in a sidebar area where the confines are somewhat narrow. A long email address or Web page address is usually the culprit. You might break the email address into two words, or just hyperlink something like "Contact Joe" with the email address to remove the email address from the text but still make it easy for your audience.