Yearbook Software Support

Our handy price calculator for software yearbooks can provide you with a quick illustration of what your yearbooks will cost.
There's a price calculator for professionally designed yearbooks too.

Yearbook prices are not normally subject to VAT and all our yearbook prices inlude delivery.

If you're at all unsure please contact us.

When you have completed your yearbook and burned it to a CD or DVD (see Burning to CD/DVD for help with this), post it to us at our address:
Dactyl Publishing, PO Box 130, Retford, DN22 9YP

We will then send you a proof copy along with an order form for you to fill in. If you require any changes, simply use the software to make the changes and send us another CD or DVD.

Please see our order schedule. We operate an 8 week turnaround from when we receive your completed yearbook on disc.

This is vitally important. We need to know in advance that your order is on its way so that we can reserve production time for you.

You must let us know if you are using our software to create your yearbook. We need to reserve a production slot for you to ensure your books arrive on time. It also helps us to offer further support to your project if it is required.

• The software is only compatible with Windows XP/Vista/7.
• Very large files can be created by the software, high specification PC's will perform better!
• We recommend that you simply install the software and try it out.

When you start a new yearbook, the software automatically creates a photobook file (.pbf) and a supporting folder which is used exclusively by the software. Please don't save anything to (or delete anything from) this supporting folder.

When you return to edit your book, open the software first and click continue yearbook (screenshot). If you open your photobook file straight from the hard drive, duplicate files are created. This uses more disk space and can cause problems during the burn process.

Click the Order button. Please be patient as this action may take some time and there is no progress bar. Click Next (again please be patient). Complete your details when the form appears and then click Next. Click Burn CD after checking your file size (see Burning to CD/DVD).

Before you click Burn CD, you need to check the size of the photobook file (.pbf) and the supporting folder. If the total file size is greater than 700MB you will need to use a DVD instead (up to 4.7GB).

Pages 4 - 14 of our Sample and Ideas book (supplied with your copy of the Yearbook Creation Software) contain many useful hints and tips on how to get started when creating your yearbook.

You can also view these pages by clicking here (once opened, you can save it to your computer for future reference by clicking File, Save As…).

When you have started your new yearbook, click on the Photos tab at the top of the left-hand window.

You can browse to the folder on your computer containing your pictures here (it works in exactly the same way as Windows Explorer).

Your pictures will be displayed here - if the file sizes are big then it may take a few minutes for the images to appear.

We strongly recommend that you organise your pictures before beginning, by using a sensible file/folder naming system.

If your images sizes are very large, please be patient! It does take a few minutes for them to appear in the window once you have selected the folder they belong in.

If your images are not JPEGs, (e.g. TIFF, PNG, BMP, etc.), they may not be appearing because these file types are not shown by default. To enable this feature, click on the Settings icon at the top of the screen, then check the box: Show PNG, TIF, BMP, JP2 files, and then click OK.

You can view the file name of each image by right clicking on any image and choosing View, and then Thumbnails and file names. This is useful if you have already organised and named all your files and are looking for a specific image, such as a particular student in a form group.

Select one of the items you wish to copy, then, while holding down both the Shift and Ctrl keys together, select the other item(s) you wish to copy as well. Press the Ctrl and C keys together (or right click on one of your still selected items and choose Copy) to copy the items, and then Ctrl and V to paste them (or right click and Paste). You can paste items onto other pages by selecting the other page first before pasting.

At the moment, there is no feature in the software to combine two different yearbooks together, however, there are two easy ways to get around this problem.

1) If, for example, one user has created a yearbook file for pages 1-19, and another user has made a separate file for pages 20-36, the second user can open up their file, right click each page and select 'copy page', and then open up the first user's file and right click and select 'insert page' to paste the page. It does mean going back forth between the two files to copy and insert each page, but it is somewhat quicker than recreating each page again from scratch.

2) Alternatively, you can send us your files for each section and our designers can put them together for you.

Click on the appropriate button at the startup screen to create the yearbook of your choice. You can edit the inner pages in the same way as a normal softback yearbook, but the cover cannot currently be created using the software as it has 'special' requirements (although please check regularly for updates as this feature may be included in the near future).

The hardcover artwork needs to be supplied to us as an image file (such as JPEG, TIFF, BMP, Photoshop, etc.) in black on a white background only. We can also accept files created in other programs such as Publisher or MS Word. The black parts will be printed in your choice of either gold or silver, and the white background will be the colour of the hardback cover: you can choose from black, red, blue or green.

See an example

We recommend that large/bold text and images are used, as fine details will not print correctly.

If you prefer you can supply us with your choice of image(s) and text (on a separate CD) and we can create the cover design for you to approve before print.

Make sure there are no other programs running before you install the software, and that there is nothing running in the background which could interfere with the installation process. If you are still experiencing difficulty, please give us a call on 01427 884998 and we will do our best to help you.

This list shows the fonts that can be used: they will need to be installed on your computer before using the software (most of these fonts are normally automatically installed with Microsoft Office XP 2000/2003).

Check the file size:
First, make sure that your photobook file (.pbf) and supporting folder are a suitable size to fit on CD (under 700MB). You can check this by browsing to your photobook file and supporting folder in My Computer, then select them both together, right-click on one of them and choose Properties to view the total file size. If the total size is bigger than 700MB, then you will need to use a DVD instead of a CD.

Using the yearbook software to burn a CD/DVD:
To burn a CD or DVD in the software, open your yearbook using the software and click the Order button (near the bottom right-hand corner of the screen). Please be patient as this action may take some time and there is no progress bar. Click Next (again please be patient). Complete your details when the form appears and then click Next, then click Burn CD.

Using Windows to burn a CD:
If you are still experiencing difficulty, or if for some reason you cannot get the software to burn the CD or DVD, there is another alternative, but we would recommend attempting to use the software burning process at least twice before trying this alternative.

Insert a blank, writable CD into the CD drive. Locate your photobook (.pbf) file and supporting folder, and copy them both (select them both, then choose Edit, Copy). Go to My Computer and open the blank CD folder, then choose Edit, Paste. Under CD Writing Tasks, click Write these files to CD. Windows displays the CD Writing Wizard. Follow the instructions in the wizard.

After the wizard has finished writing your files to CD, it is useful to view the CD to confirm that the files have been successfully copied.

Burning a DVD or copying to a memory stick:
If your files are too big to fit on a CD, the CD writing wizard will inform you of this, in which case you will need to burn to a DVD using other software (normally supplied with your DVD-burning drive, but if in doubt, ask for help).

If you prefer, you can copy the files onto a USB memory stick to send to us (which we will post back to you).

You might decide to give different members of your yearbook team a particular section of the yearbook to work on. You can only edit any one version of the book on one PC at a time. Splitting the book into sections is a good way to ensure each member of the team uses their time efficiently.

Each group can then produce their own part of the book, and when all the sections have been sent the yearbook team here at Dactyl will 'electronically stitch' all of your sections together to produce a 'Master Copy' of your school's book.

You can supply your sections either by burning each individual section to disc, or by copying the photobook file and supporting folder (see Folders) for each section onto one or more memory sticks.

We can send your 'Master' back to you, either on disc or memory stick, so that you still retain control of any changes you might want to make to each draft.

Your yearbook project is fully portable between multiple PCs due to the fact that there are no licence restrictions on the software. Once downloaded, you can install Dactyl Yearbooks on as many computers as you like. In school, installing the software may need to be done by the IT Technicians or another member of staff, but for use at home each member of the committee can install the same copy of the software on both their PC and laptop without breaching any terms of the licence.

You should consider putting the install files onto a memory stick, and then use the same memory stick to store the most up to date copy of your yearbook. Please regularly backup your project to another location to ensure no work is lost.

Once you have the install files and you yearbook project on the memory stick, if you want to work on your yearbook on a PC that doesn't already have the software installed, you can install Dactyl Yearbooks from the memory stick and then begin work within just a few seconds.

Save your updated book back to your memory stick (and keep a back up copy to be on the safe side) and take the stick with you. The most up to date version of the book is then on your stick ready for any future editing.