Often, customers are asked to create a flyer or a poster for some organization with which they are associated. It might be Rotary or a golf group or a bowling league or church. No matter what the group, people often find themselves willing to help but unsure how to go about it.

If you’re a Microsoft Office user, you might try to make a flyer in Word. In the Google array of apps, there’s Google Docs. Both of these products have templates for various posters and flyers. If you’re going to merely substitute a picture for the template picture or text for the template text, this option might suffice. However, if you’d like to move text boxes around, change the size of a picture or add a border, these apps might be challenging. After all, originally, these apps took the place of a word processor not a graphic design program.

Enter Microsoft Publisher. If you’re a PC user and have Microsoft Office 365, you already have Publisher. Unfortunately, for Mac users, Office 365 doesn’t include Publisher. However, most Macs come with Pages. While I personally don’t like Pages as well as Publisher, that could be more of a familiarity bias on my part.

Microsoft Publisher allows you to do just about anything when it comes to creating posters and flyers (and more). Next to Microsoft Outlook, Publisher is my most-used Office application. If you’ve never used Publisher but you have a PC with Office 365, you should open it up and give it a spin. Naturally, like any new program, there’s a learning curve but don’t be discouraged.