Church Directory

[Pam Etienne]

We are wanting to print our own Church Directory since we have a great color copier. My question is - is it possible to print our own and not use an outside source. I can print but the booklet pages are out of wack and would have to manually cut up the pages and put them back together to get them in order. Is there a way to do this from PowerChurch - do we need another program to export it to? We would be grateful for any suggestions.

Thanks,
Pam

[JohnDMeyers]

Pam:

It depends a lot on how many pages are in your directory. We did our own directory using a color printer for three years in a row, about 20 pieces of paper (40 numbered pages), not using PowerChurch as the database, but some other program.

We found that the cost in labor for our admin assistant, the cost of printing ink, the number of paper mis-feeds, and so forth were not worth it. Printing costs have down so much, it is cheaper (and less wear on our office staff) to send it out. I think it cost us $1,200 the last time we did it internally (300 directories), and $800 last year sending it out.

[Pam Etienne]

With the new Xerox printer we have it only cost us 5 cents a copy. We will probably print about 300 directories with 20 pages and our cost is going to be somewhere around $500. Which program did you use to print your directory.

[JohnDMeyers]

Microsoft Publisher. That is not the correct program by any means, and it is probably why it took so long to do them in the office. Our secretary was familiar with the program, however.

[John Dykema]

Here is what we have been doing:
We use PC+ dirctory and choose Column Format, then choose the necessary options we want included.
The export file it makes is for Word for Windows in documents\pcreport
Open the file and click Cntrl-A
Start Publisher and set up the booklet and page formatting you want.
Paste file into Publisher

Of course, now the tweaks begin.
We've done this a couple years now.