publishing/graphic design software?

hi ladies,
I'm trying to lay out my resume in Microsoft Word and it's killing me. Wonky column behavior, incremental rather than infinite options for placement of graphic elements, not as much control over line spacing as I'd like, etc.

I can't afford real graphic design software (like InDesign, etc) right now. I'd like to spend under $100 if possible. I'm on a Mac and am not running bootcamp, parallels, etc, so it has to be mac compatible (I'm running Leopard).

Does anyone know of any inexpensive, mac compatible software that will do a better job with layout than Word?

thanks!

I just got a new Mini maybe a month ago and have been playing with NeoOffice...so far I really like it. Prior to this I had been using Appleworks, which is long gone (at least gone between my previous PPC Mini and the new Intel one). And it's free...though I may toss some money at the developers because I like it.

if you just want to do one document, go to the Adobe site and download a free 30 day trial of what ever graphic software you need.

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Originally Posted by liza

hi ladies,
I'm trying to lay out my resume in Microsoft Word and it's killing me. Wonky column behavior, incremental rather than infinite options for placement of graphic elements, not as much control over line spacing as I'd like, etc.

I can't afford real graphic design software (like InDesign, etc) right now. I'd like to spend under $100 if possible. I'm on a Mac and am not running bootcamp, parallels, etc, so it has to be mac compatible (I'm running Leopard).

Does anyone know of any inexpensive, mac compatible software that will do a better job with layout than Word?

thanks!

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Word perfect actually works pretty well for that stuff.

But depending on what you do for a living, I'd caution you against doing anything really fancy with your resume. Alot of places take online submissions of resumes where you sit and copy & paste parts of your resume into online formats... And if you get to fancy with format, it just doesn't work. Or you upload your resume in a document, and if the format gets wonked because of some difference, it doesn't look too good.

But if you don't work in a profession where you'll everhave to upload your resume, just ignore that comment.

Liza, if you have Microsoft Word on your computer, do you have Microsoft Office as well? If you do, see if it includes Microsoft Publisher. That would work for what you are wanting to do. If not, I agree with Cat about Word Perfect. I think it's much easier to use for the type document you are trying to create.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Bike Chick, I have Office for Mac. Publisher is a good idea -- it was my first thought, actually, because I've used publisher before -- but unfortunately Microsoft doesn't make a Mac version of Publisher.

I downloaded a trial of Apple Pages (sort of a hybrid between Word & Publisher) and so far it seems to handle layout much better than Word.

Try on the Adobe website and see if you can download a trial version of Page Maker. Even an old version of PM is way better than Microsoft Word!
Good luck!