Brochures & Window Cards using Word

PLEASE NOTE: We do not support versions of Word running on anything lower than Office 365 (Word will only work on a Desktop/Laptop installation rather than mobile - I.E. iPads etc).  

Expert Agent automates the process of producing property brochures and Window Cards using Microsoft Word via the Expert Agent process known as Wordlink

Producing Word brochures in Expert Agent saves you lots of time because you don’t have to enter photos, text, floorplans etc. twice – just put them into Expert Agent and it will merge everything into a candidate for the finished brochure. Why "Candidate"? Because when using WordLink you can make one-off changes before publishing to a PDF file. It then keeps the PDF file up to date with the current price.

Doing brochures & Window cards via Wordlink is your best option. You'll use the same functionality for both (you'll probably want one of each) - and as far as Expert Agent is concerned, they are both the same. So, from here on, we'll talk about brochures only - later you'll see how the "office brochure" becomes your window card and the "website brochure" becomes the full brochure that everyone sees via printed, website and portal channels.

There is another way of doing brochures and window cards - and that's HTML - see  HTML Letters, Brochures and Reports. To save you looking, the HTML approach lacks layout flexibility and is hard to set up. If you are big semi-corporate and you want simple but 100% identical window cards with the same number of advert lines, the same number of pictures, the same advert heading width etc, HTML might work. 

Pros:

• The best possible layout flexibility,
• The familiarity of Word.
• Produces a published PDF as the end result.
• It creates a Word master that you edit in Word (or anything else that handles docx files)  to turn into a masterpiece
• You can do anything you can do in Word – no limitations
• No components or downloads
• It creates a Dynamic PDF brochures – the price changes automatically
• There’s a bit of uploading and saving to master – very easy once you’ve done one.

Cons:

• You need a Wordprocessor that can use .docx files

Wordlink uses Microsoft Word Docx file format and Word itself as the wordprocessor/editor.  It might be possible to use it with other wordprocessors that can read and above all write Docx files but that’s beyond the scope of our research and support.  

How do I create Brochure Templates on a Mac? - a chapter to explain the intricacies of using Word on the Mac

I need some extra help on using Word is an FAQ chapter explaining what we can and can't offer in terms of brochure setup help.

Note re older versions of Word. Please note we cannot provide support for versions older than Office 365. This is simply because Microsoft themselves no longer support any versions older than this.  You can read more about when their product support ends for all versions here on their website. You'll find while you may be able to successfully produce your brochures using an older version, layouts can get messed up, fonts can disappear etc so if you are experiencing issues, it would be worth upgrading your subscription to get the latest version of Word.

In order to get started, you need to familiarise yourself with using WordLink. We run training weekly on using Wordlink for both letters and brochures – see the training section of our manual.  

WordLink manages 3 document types in relation to brochures & window cards:

Templates – the original documents that Expert Agent copies and merges whenever you create a brochure. You can have as many as you want. Set them up in the same way as Standard Letters (See the Wordlink Standard Letters chapter in the Learning Centre) but, when finished, make sure that the document type is set to “Property Particulars”. We supply several examples. To use them, you’ll need to clone them and make your own versions

Word Masters – each property can have up to 2 different Word Masters – we call them the Office Master and the Website Master. You probably only need one – particularly if you print on plain paper such that your brochures contain your letterheads and disclaimers. The second one is to allow for a 2nd copy without graphics for printing on your own letterhead paper OR for use as a window card.

These Word Master start off as filled in, merged copies of the appropriate chosen template but can be edited to create a masterpiece. When finished, they are uploaded and Expert Agent creates what we call:

Dynamic PDF Brochures  - a PDF that changes when there is a price change. The Word master is then stored in case there’s a need to make a change.  The Dynamic PDF Brochure gets displayed to the public.

More: 

Cloning EA default brochures

Creating new brochure templates

Converting your existing Word brochures

Editing brochure template using EA data

Uploading a brochure to EA

Producing a Window Card

Microsoft Word tips

Generic Wordlink Template Samples