Printing & Publications

The print studio turns what is on the calendar into something you can put on a noticeboard, hand out at the door, or send as a PDF. It builds a real document — not this website with print styles laid over it — which is why a printed month looks like a wall calendar rather than a screenshot of one.

Open it from Calendar → Print this view, which carries across the dates and layers you are already looking at. Printables remains the hub for the standard sheets: roster lists, event lists, birthday directories.

📷 Screenshot: The print studio with the options panel on the left and a page preview on the right.

How the screen is arranged

The options sit on the left, grouped into sections you can fold away, and the page itself fills the right. Everything you change redraws the preview, so the sheet on screen is the sheet that will come out of the printer.

• Hide options collapses the panel when you want to judge the page itself.
• Publication at the top says which saved sheet you are looking at, or Untitled calendar if you have not saved one.
• Print and Save as PDF sit at the bottom, under the options.

Saving a publication

A publication is a set of choices you can reopen next month. Use it for the sheets your church prints regularly — the birthday calendar, the ministry roster, the year planner.

• Save as… names a new publication.
• Save updates the one you have open.
• Reset puts back what was saved, discarding your edits.
• Delete removes it. This cannot be undone.

A publication stores the period, not the dates. A sheet saved as "This month" prints September in September and October in October — you do not need a new one each time.

Administrators can share a publication with everyone. Anyone may open a shared one; only its owner or an administrator can change it.

Content — what goes on the sheet

When sets the period: this month, next month, the next three months, this year, or dates you pick.

Two presets cover what a church usually prints, and everything else is a one-off:

• Birthdays & holidays — the celebrant sheet for the noticeboard.
• Ministry & leadership — who is serving, and the leadership diary.
• Clear unticks everything so you can build a sheet from scratch.

Below the presets, tick the calendars you want: General, Ministry events, Leadership, Role assignments, Ministry schedules, Ministry rosters, Birthdays, and the holiday calendars. Ticking nothing prints an empty sheet, and the studio says so rather than quietly printing everything.

Design — layout, theme and how much room entries get

Layout is the kind of document:

• Monthly calendar — the wall calendar, one grid to a month.
• Weekly calendar — a week to a row, with far more room in each day.
• Agenda — a list rather than a grid, for a handout.
• Sunday schedule — the service sheet.
• Year at a glance — twelve months on one page.
• Ministry planner — the consolidated duty roster.

Theme is how it is dressed. The same dates can be four quite different publications:

• Classic — the church's usual sheet. Restrained and dense; right for operational calendars.
• Editorial — a publication rather than a notice. Large title, generous margins, a quiet grid.
• Planner — warm and open, with room left to write on. Best for quieter months.
• Celebration — for birthdays and anniversaries. Rounded cells, big names, friendly decoration.

Planner and Celebration are designed for the monthly grid, so they are offered only when that layout is chosen.

How much room entries get decides the writing inside each day:

• Auto — each day decides for itself. A quiet day gets larger writing; a busy one stays dense. This is the default and suits most sheets.
• Compact — the church's existing wall calendar exactly. Use it when most days are busy.
• Readable — larger type and more air, for calendars with a few entries a day.
• Showcase — one or two names set large and centred. This is the setting for a birthday sheet.

Page

Paper is Letter, A4, Legal or A3. Direction is portrait, landscape, or Auto, which lets the layout choose — a month grid wants landscape, an agenda wants portrait.

Header & footer

Tick what the masthead shows: church name, campus, the month or period, and what the document is. You can replace the document label with a title of your own — "Birthday calendar" reads better than "Monthly calendar" on a celebrant sheet — and add a line under the church name.

The footer can carry the date printed, the website, the church name, a page number, and a note of your own.

Notes on the sheet

Two optional blocks of text: one above the calendar and one below it. Use them for a reminder, a verse, or a contact number.

Left blank, neither takes any room at all. An empty block that still reserved space would cost you a row of the calendar, so a note you have not written simply is not there.

Appearance

• Text size — small through largest. It scales the whole document consistently.
• Density — how tightly the grid is set. A separate choice from text size: the same large type can have less air around it.
• Names — in full, or shortened to a first name and an initial. Where a cell has room to wrap, the full name is kept anyway.
• Typeface — classic serif, plain sans, bold display, or typewriter.
• Title style — classic, editorial, or banner.
• Accent — the church colour, or one of the alternatives.
• Decoration and How much — appear only for themes that carry artwork. Choose the artwork set, then how much of it you want.
• Ink friendly — drops the page fills and decoration and keeps the design otherwise as drawn. Worth using for a long print run.

Printing, and saving a PDF

Print and Save as PDF open the same dialog, because a web page cannot choose the destination for you. To get a PDF, pick Save as PDF as the destination in that dialog.

Open in a new tab gives you the document on its own, which is useful for checking a long sheet before committing it to paper.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Printing the wrong campus. The campus selector in the top bar decides whose events appear, and a saved publication does not override it.
• Expecting a saved publication to change the calendar screen. It is a printing recipe. Opening one does not change what Month or Week shows.
• Leaving background graphics off and then wondering why the banner printed white.
• Choosing Compact for a birthday sheet. Compact is for busy days; a celebrant list wants Showcase or Auto.
• Ticking nothing under Content and printing an empty page. The studio warns you, but the warning is easy to scroll past.