word to pdf creation: problem with section and page breaks

Anonymous
2012-07-16T19:44:45+00:00

I had posted this question about a month ago, but wasn't able to follow up due to time constraints.  My apologies to those who were trying to assist.  It was suggested that I begin anew to try to clarify the details of the problem(s).  A general statement of the problem is that section breaks in a Word (Word for Mac 2011, v 14.2.3) document introduce aberrations in the pdf created from that document via a “save as…pdf command.  I am running OS X, 10.7.4 on a MacBookPro, mid 2009 vintage. 

I am inserting the section break after material on the last page of one layout, when the following page has the opposite layout (portrait vs landscape).  This causes two problems:

1.     Multiple pdfs are created, with a new pdf being created following every section break.

2.     The first page of each new pdf is rendered aberrantly:

a.     When the new pdf begins with a landscape page, the whole page (including header and footer) are “pushed down,” leaving extra space at the top of the page above the header and “loosing” the footer off the bottom of the page.

b.     When the new pdf begins with a portrait page, the whole page (including header and footer) are “pushed right,” leaving an overly wide left hand margin and “loosing” some of the text off the right hand side of the page.

As a work around, I’ve inserted a blank page after every section break in the Word document.  Thus, when I create the pdf there is no text on the aberrantly rendered pages, but the page numbering is incorrect.  I delete the blank pages after “knitting together” the multiple pdfs created. 

I consider this a major glitch in Mac Word 2011, as it makes it a far inferior product to Word for Windows 2010.  It puts me in the amateur lane rather than having a truly professional product for my work.  Is there a fix in the offing?

Thank you so much!

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2014-04-17T23:22:38+00:00

I don't know if this will help with your specific issue, but thought I would put this here.

I have a large Word document (Word for Mac 2011) with multiple section breaks, however they are all in portrait.  I've been working off of this document for years.  Over the last month, when I printed to PDF or Preview, the document split into separate files at each section break.  Very frustrating having to piece the files back together, when I never had to do this before!

I just found the solution for my problem though!

Go to Print (Command+P), select Page Setup... (under the preview pane), and set Settings to Microsoft Word as the default.  Mine was set to Page Attributes, which is what causes it to split at the section breaks.

I don't know how my default got changed to Page Attributes, but changing it to Microsoft Word fixed the issue I was having.

Hope this helps someone else.

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Anonymous
2014-04-28T22:20:47+00:00

It didn't work unfortunately, but I have since found a way to combine all of the separate PDFs created together using preview, I just opened them all in separate preview windows, selected the option to show thumbnails making sure the pages were expanded so I could see each page as a thumbnail, then highlighted and dragged and dropped the different pages into the same thumbnail of the 1st PDF in the order that I wanted them to appear! The landscape pages do save properly in this way.

Thanks for your help though :)

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Anonymous
2015-01-31T03:46:35+00:00

Hi All,

The best workaround for this problem is to create the document in Word for Mac then upload it to Online Word at office.live.com (Free Account) and print from the there. Online word creates a PDF document that as no errors.

Cheers,

Humphrey

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-09-12T11:31:04+00:00

    This solution works - just remember to change to "apply to whole document" after changing from Settings to Microsoft Word from Page Attributes.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-31T00:32:31+00:00

    I followed all of the steps from Peter Jamieson's October 21st 2014 post.  When I press ctrl-option-shift-P (step k), a small square about the size of a single lowercase character appears wherever my cursor is located.  No .pdf is generated, and Preview is not launched.  Any suggestions?

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