Viewing Pre-designed Pages in StoryBook Creator 4.0

StoryBook Creator 4.0 has a great new feature that enables you to better see what each pre-designed page looks like before you select it.  However you will need to "create an abstract" of any pre-designed page packages that were designed for the 3.0 version.  This is very easy to do.  It just takes a bit of time.  You can choose to do it each time you look up a pre-designed page kit or you might choose to do all of them some night when you are watching TV. 

Here are the steps you take.
1. When you are in your StoryBook Creator 4.0 project choose Change Template from the Home Ribbon.

2. You will receive a message that states that you cannot undo a template page change.  Choose OK.  This means that you can't use the undo button to get back the page you had.  But you can always go back and find that page again.  You don't want to change a page template if you have already added photos and text because you may lose the photos and text that were added.

3.  The Window on the lower right will appear and you use the drop down arrow in the blue circle.  This will open the window on the left.  (Yours will have a different pre-designed page showing) You can scroll through and choose the pre-designed pages you want to view from the list on the left (red circle).  This will give you a mini-preview of the pages in that particular kit.  When you have found the one you want you then choose Select Kit (black circle). 

4. This will open the window shown.  You will then see the message circled in blue that says "Create an Abstract for the selected kit"  Click on this and the abstract will be created.  It takes a few minutes to create.

5. Once the abstract is created you can then choose the number of photos you want on a page in area 2 (blue circle) and then click on the page you want to see large in area 3 and it will appear to the right as a large image.  Once you decide which page you want to add to your project choose change template (red circle).  Don't panic if you think the text looks like it is in a foreign language.  This is called Geeking.  It is made to resemble what text typed on the page will look like.  When you actually choose the template it will just have an "Enter Text Here" box where the Geeking is on the preview image.

Note: this may not work on some of the very old pre-designed pages. 

Please let me know if you have any questions.  I love this new feature of StoryBook Creator 4.0.