Print Your Certificate of Recognition From Microsoft Word 2010

By Jacci Howard Bear, About.com Guide

^{This is page 5 of Create a Certificate of Recognition in Word 2010}

^{BEFORE YOU CONTINUE}
_{You need to know: how to proofread | how to do desktop printing}

1. Preview
   Take a look at how your certificate will print:

   File > Print

2. Print a Proof
   Sometimes an actual print out will reveal issues not apparent in the on-screen preview. Print a copy of your certificate on plain paper. Proofread. Do you need to adjust your margins? Are there any typos? Is the font too small? Do you not like the positioning of the gold seal? If there's a problem, fix it.

3. Final Print
   For your final print, load your printer with the paper you want to use for your certificate. Sure, plain paper works but for something a bit more special consider lightly colored parchment paper or one of these other Certificate Papers.

DONE. Now, make a Certificate of Achievement for yourself because you've just learned how to use Microsoft Word, a word processing program, to do a little bit of basic desktop publishing.

Want to do multiple certificates for several recipients? Use Mail Merge. You'll need to set up a data file with all the names (and personalized descriptions if they aren't all the same). Then you'll create your certificate as the merge document, inserting codes in place of actual names. About.com Word Processing Guide Rebecca Johnson has instructions on How to Create a Microsoft Word 2010 Mail Merge.

Tasks And Steps In This Tutorial:

1. Get the template for the certificate of your choice.
2. Set up a new document for use with the certificate template.
3. Add personalized text to the certificate.
4. Use Shapes & Text on a Path to create a gold seal with ribbons. (3 pages)
5. this page Print the finished certificate.