How to Create a Printable

There’s lots of different ways to create a Printable for yourself, or to sell in your business. You can use Microsoft Office which includes, Word, Excel, Publisher and PowerPoint. Or you can purchase Photoshop and use that, but there is a steep learning curve for that.

When I first started out creating them I used Microsoft Word. But, I soon ran into problems such as images not staying put and you couldn’t duplicate pages quickly and easily. I actually became super frustrated with the entire process.

From there I tried Excel and Publisher with not much success. I downloaded a free trial of Photoshop and became so overwhelmed with that too.

Then, quite by accident I started using PowerPoint. At first it was just to create the graphics for the printables, and then saved them as images.

I then saw someone create a magazine type template in PowerPoint and it looked great! My next step was to test it out myself.

With the custom page sizes you can easily set the dimensions you like and change it to portrait style. Then starting with a blank slide or template you can add all kinds of blocks of text, images, create checklists and draw tables. Plus it was so easy to keep all the elements in place! No more adding a line of text only to find everything jumps to the next page. Then talk about duplicating pages – it’s so fast to duplicate any number of pages!

I was hooked on using PowerPoint not just to create my Printables, but also my journals and planners!

Here’s a super simple Printable page that I created in PowerPoint.

Then here’s a more complex design.

It’s easy to create tables and lines and I prefer to create lined pages using the table feature. You insert a table, remove the outside borders, change the line style, weight and color and your new table is ready.

The same with shapes. It’s easy to add a plain, dotted, or dashed border to the shape. Select your color and it’s ready to go. When you need more than one table or shape just do a Control C and Control V to copy and paste it as many times as you need.

With the above Baby Care Template you could simply change out the background to create a new version. Or just change the colors, the dashed lines to solid or dotted and again you have a different look.

Once you have your printable looking just the way you like it, it’s time to save it. Again, you have several options available. You can save the image as a Picture using the Save as JPG or PNG features. Or save or export it directly to a PDF. If you are going to be selling your printable on Etsy then saving it as a PDF is the best option.

I plan on adding lots more information on how to create your Printables using PowerPoint, if you have any questions just let me know in the comments below and I will be more than happy to answer them for you.