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If you have recently started using QuarkXPress, you may perhaps find yourself making some of the errors outlined in this article. Take a minute to read through our top beginner pitfalls and spare yourself a little frustration in getting to grips with your new software. When you create a new project in QuarkXPress, the New Document window appears. Users new to QuarkXPress will often create a new project and click OK without taking the slightest notice of the settings in the New Project dialogue. Quark keeps the settings from the last project you created.

If these are unsuitable for the document you are about to create, adjust the page size, orientation, margin and column guides as needed. Having set margins when creating a new project, many new QuarkXPress users will still feel inclined to place their text and picture boxes inside the margin guides, leaving an extra outer space. Remember, the blue outline signify the margin guides not the edges of the page. Normally, the edges of your text boxes will need to be positioned on the margin rather then inside them. Another common error is excessive use of ruler guides.

These are created by dragging either the vertical or horizontal ruler onto the page and can be used to align elements using Quark's handy snap-to-guides features. Snapping two elements to the same guide ensures that their edges are aligned. This is a great feature when used in moderation. However, a lot of users create so many guides that it becomes difficult to see which guide relates to which element on the page.

In general, guides are quicker to use but measurements are more accurate. When using QuarkXPress, it's often the case that you want to align a new element with something that's already on the page and, if you are fond of using guides for alignment, you will probably drag a guide onto one of the edges of the existing element and then snap the new element to the guide. Bear in mind when you do this, however, that only the second element is actually properly aligned with the guide, since dragging a guide close to an object doesn't snap the object to the guide; only the reverse is true. To have both elements correctly aligned, you will need to also snap the first element to the guide.

The automatic text box feature in QuarkXPress can be activated when creating a new project: you just click on the check-box marked “Automatic Text Box”.

It allows us to go into something approaching word processing mode.

It should be used when creating multi-page documents consisting mainly of text such as a report or book.

The automatic text box feature is great for long documents. However, you will often see QuarkXPress users activating this option when creating short documents or even documents consisting of a single page.

They make the assumption that all the feature does is to save them the trouble of creating a text box.

In fact, if the text box ever becomes filled with text (which can easily happen as you experiment with different text formats), a new page is immediately generated and your single page document becomes a two page document.

The text box tool can also be a source of confusion among people who have recently started using QuarkXPress.

The text box tool is used to create text boxes.

It can't be used for anything else. However, you will often see new users attempting to use it to edit the text within the box.

In fact, the content tool is the only tool which can be used to edit text. Another popular type of confusion with the QuarkXPress tools is when to use the Item tool and when to use the Content tool. One often sees beginners trying to edit or import text while the Item tool is selected. Like the text box tool error, it's not such a biggie since sooner or later you will remember that you have to select the Content tool before you access the text inside the box. Many new users also insist on always ensuring that they select the item tool whenever they want to resize a text or picture box.

In fact, you can resize a box regardless of whether the item or content tool is selected. Beginners tend to create a lot more text boxes than they actually need.

They'll create a box for a heading, another for the sub heading and so on. Actually, you can change your formatting within the same QuarkXPress text box as many times as you like.

There is no need to create a new box each time the format changes.

You only really need separate boxes where there are attributes which can't exist within the same box such as the number of columns. Focusing on the box rather than the content is another basic error made by inexperienced QuarkXPress users. Unless the user specifies otherwise, QuarkXPress text and picture boxes do not print. Only their contents will actually print. However, many users insist on carefully vertically centring the text within a box forgetting that, to all intents and purposes, there is no box there.

The solution to this one is F7 (a shortcut for View – Guides) which hides margin and ruler guides as well as the frame normally shown around text and picture boxes.
Author is a developer and trainer with OnSiteTrainingCourses. Coms , an independent computer training company offering QuarkXPress training courses at their central London training centre.

Articoolz.com > Typical Rookie Errors Made By New Users Of Quarkxpress