MS Publisher was designed to give you lots of room to work. The area around your page is called the scratch area. Anything you put in this area will not be printed when you printed your page. To get the most out of the scratch area, keep these tips in mind.

The scratch area is a great place to temporarily store objects while you are working on your publication. For example, while you are laying out your newsletter, you can place all of your articles in their own text boxes in the scratch area. You will then be able to see at a glance how much of your newsletter has been completed and how much more copy needs to be inserted.

If you use certain elements in your newsletter that are optional for each month, you can store them in the scratch area for future use. For example, if you sometimes use a pull quote and have a specific format you want to use each time, you can store a sample pull quote in your scratch area. You will then be able to simply drag the pull quote frame to your page and type in the correct text for that article.;

If you are experimenting with several designs on your page and wish to print out samples, using the scratch area is the best way to do this. Let's say you are designing a logo. Move all of the logo samples but one onto the scratch area. Then print that page. Only the logo on the page will print. Remove that first logo to the scratch area and pull another logo onto the page. Print the page again. Only your second logo will print. Continue until you've printed all your samples. This saves you from having to create a document with multiple pages for each sample.

Be careful, however, if you send your publication to a commercial printing service to be printed. In this case, you will want to delete elements from the scratch area. This will eliminate questions about these extra objects. You also will avoid any additional charges that the printer has for extra objects not on your pages.