top of page

Creating a PDF Publishing Project


A PDF Project enables you to quickly turn your data into a complete publication and save it as a pdf and/or a Word document. This tutorial describes the steps you take to build the project. (For a more detailed overview of PDF publishing with CatBase, see this page).

​

Steps to build your PDF Publishing Project

  1. Set up a Publishing Stylesheet

  2. Create a new Publishing Project and select PDF as the Publishing Destination

  3. Add Sections to your publication

  4. Publish it!

 

Let's look at each step in detail ...

 

1. Set up a Publishing Stylesheet

Publishing Stylesheets tell CatBase what data you want to publish from your database, and how you want it sorted and formatted, whether to include pictures (and how to format them), etc. This will form the essential Body of your publication - ie, the dynamic data. Every publication must have at least one Body section; it can contain multiple Body sections.

 

For more info about Publishing Stylesheets, see this Tutorial.

 

2. Create a new Publishing Project

.Once you have your Publishing Stylesheet set up, you're ready to build your Publishing Project.

  1. From the main row of tabs at the top of the main window, select the Publishing tab.

  2. On the left of the window, expand the Publishing Projects topic by clicking on the little arrow next to that heading.

  3. Click New Publishing Project.

  4. In the new Publishing Project area, select PDF from the dropdown Publishing Destination menu.The view changes:

​

PDF publishing project new).png

This is the Settings page. You'll need to make a few changes here before you canproceed.

​

Publishing Project Name

Enter a name for your Publishing Project. This is for your reference; give it a meaningful name!

Publishing Destination

You don't need to change this ... PDF is the required option here.

Description

You can optionally enter a brief description of the project here.

Run a script before publishing

If you need some specific, custom functions to be executed prior to creating the publication, we can create custom Scripts for you. If you have a custom script to run, select this check box. You'll then see an option to import the script.

Find out more about custom scripts.

Final File Name

What do you want your PDF/Word document to be named? Enter that here (note: you don't need to enter the file extension.)

Save To

If you want the document(s) to be saved into a specific location, click the Select a folder button and choose the folder. If you don't choose a folder, CatBase will save the files into a folder called Data Exports on your Desktop.

Page Size

Choose your desired page size from the dropdown menu.

Page Orientation buttons

"Portrait" is selected as the default. Click the Landscape button to switch to that layout.

Facing Pages

Select this option if you want the publication created in a book or magaine format with 2 side-by-side pages. LEave it unselected to create a single-page layout.

Display Mode

The default is Actual Size. The PDF will be displayed in its actual page size. You can choose a different option to change the setting.

Page Margins

The default is 0 for all sides of the page, meaning that your data can go right up to the edges of the page. If you want a margin around each page, enter the values here, in pixels.

Save an editable document each time the project is published

If this option is selected, each time you publish the project, a copy will be saved in CatBase's own word processing format in the database. You'll be able edit that in any way you wish, and then republish it as a PDF or Word document.

Publish to PDF

Create a PDF version of the publication when it is published.

Publish to Word

Create a Microsoft Word .docx version of the publication.

​

Once you have chosen your Settings, you're ready to add Sections to your publication! 

Click the Document Settings tab to continue.

bottom of page