Special Instructions - Catholic Digital Resources

Special Instructions
Please read whichever of the following applies to your order.

Not sure how to actually do the download?
See our step-by-step page for Windows users.

PowerPoint (PPT) Presentations
You do not need to have the PowerPoint program to use the presentation. After downloading the PPT package and unzipping it, be sure to read the "README" file before doing anything else, for further instructions. The README file in the folder that the PPT package unzips into describes how to run the presentation. The PPT is password protected so that people don't accidentally change the presentation. The instructions tell you how to use the pptview.exe program (included in the package) to run PPT without the password. If you own a Mac computer, download PowerPoint 98 Viewer for Macintosh and use it instead of pptview.exe.

Many of our documents include color photos. What if you don't have a fast color photocopier?
If you don't have a good photocopier or the time to make the copies, no problem! You can email or upload them to the website of Kinko's or similar place, and have them printed overnight. More about this ....

Word (.doc) files
If you do not have MS Word 2003 or later on your computer, ask for a PDF version, or download Open Office (a free - and better! - alternative to Microsoft's Office Suite that can handle Word and other MS files). Earlier versions of Word will probably work okay unless the document includes customizable areas; to input your own text into these areas, you'll need version 2003 or later, or Open Office.

If a page does not format correctly for you, it might be because your software's page margins are set differently than mine. Or it might be because your software's hyphenation option has not been activated.

In MS Word, open a new, blank document. Then go to the File menu, then choose "Page Setup". There, set the margins to:

After clicking the "okay" button, go back to the handout and open it again. It should look fine now. If the print-out does not show all parts of the page, go into your printer's properties, options, or preferences, and choose the check-boxes that enable "background printing" as well as "hidden objects".

Occasionally, a Word document has different margin settings than this. If the above fails to fix your problem, let me know.

In MS Word, go up to the Tools menu at the top of the window, choose Language, then choose Hyphenation. Lastly, check the box "Automatically hyphenate document" and click the OK button. Here's a screenshot of this:

Customizable Leaflets
Some digital leaflets are Word documents with a customizable box for typing in whatever information you want to add before printing it.

To make this work, you should see a yellow highlighted area, surrounded by gold brackets (see it in the text box above). Your cursor must be inside the yellow area. If you do not see yellow, you need to activate it. Here's how (these instructions were made using MS Word 2003) :

With the document open, pull up the Task Pane (using the View menu or Ctrl-F1). You will see something like this on the left side of your screen:
Use the little black down-arrow (the red arrow in the image below points to it) to get a drop-down menu listing all the available task panes. Choose "Protect Document" (green arrow).
Next, you check the box for "Highlight the regions I can edit", as shown below, and/or use the buttons to find and show the regions you can edit.
Now the yellow editable zones will display. These are expandable text areas. Place your cursor in an input zone and begin typing. You may choose your font style, size, etc. (To move to the next editable zone, do not use the tab key, because this will only enlarge the same zone.)

e-Books
Our ebooks can be printed as a whole book or as individual pages for meditation and reflection over a period of time. The margins have room for hole-punching to store in 3-ring binders.

Pamphlets

Foldable pamphlets should be printed double-sided, then folded in half and possibly stapled to make a pamphlet that's easy to use.

PDF files
If you cannot open a PDF file, you need to download the free PDF reader from Adobe.

Zip files
Your computer probably already has a program for unzipping this file. In Windows (for example), right-click over the zip file after you've save it to your computer; a pop-up window will include an unzip option, called "Extract to". Another unzipping program is WinZip.

Multi-Media Meditations (.wmv files)
Go to the how-to page made for this.