word to pdf creation: problem with section and page breaks

Anonymous

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!

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Anonymous

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

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

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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49 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-10-21T21:12:13+00:00

> to my mind that definitely qualifies as havng to perform intricate, pretzel-like computer gymnastics to possibly solve this issue

Of course it is :-) No-one actually wants to have to jump through all these hoops to have to solve a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place. Unfortunately, sometimes resorting to creating code seems to be the only way.

I am pretty sure that the following may seem even harder to you than the stuff in the conversation you just read, but it's as far as I can get without putting an awful lot more effort in.

It's just a set of steps. If you try them, you may well find that you have a workable solution to the problem. And if you don't, I doubt they will take more than about 5 or 10 minutes of your time.

a. Close Word

b. point your browser at https://www.dropbox.com/s/a6bud1tdwpzb92g/SaveAsSinglePDF.dotm?dl=0

c. you should see a download button. Click it.

d. What happens next depends partly on your browser, but what should happen is that you end up with a copy of a file called SaveAsSinglePDF.dotmin your Downloads folder.

e. Use Finder to copy that file to the following folder under your home folder:

Library:Application Support:Microsoft:Office:User Templates:My Templates

(e.g., on a typical system this would be at

Macintosh HD:Users:username:Library:Application Support:Microsoft:Office:User Templates:My Templates

where "username" is your username)

f. Start Word

g. In the Tools menu, Templates and Addins... option, click the Add... button, then open the My Templates folder in the dialog box that follows.

h. Select SaveAsSinglePDF.dotm, then click Open.

i. The template should then be loaded and available

j. open a test file that you want to save in PDF format.

k. click *ctrl-option-shift-P .*I have associated this keystroke with the VBA macro that produces the PDF. The macro should run, produce the PDF, and open it in Preview. You will need to switch to Preview to see the result.

When you put the template in this location, each time you restart Word, you have to go back into the Tools menu, Templates and Addins... option and check the box next to the SaveAsSinglePDF.dotm. It's possible to put the template somewhere else to solve that, but one step at a time...
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Anonymous

2014-10-21T17:14:48+00:00

Thanks Peter. You are a great group of volunteers and a great resource. In fact when I was talking to the support person (possibly just a very basic phone answerer from another country) she told me to go to this site to find an answer if I don't want to pay Microsoft another $100 to ask my question.

I went to the page with your Applescript code and I gotta say, to my mind that definitely qualifies as havng to perform intricate, pretzel-like computer gymnastics to possibly solve this issue. Unfortunately I don't have the time or expertise to try that. But I DO appreciate the work that you put into trying to find a solution. Now if only those who we pay big bucks to for these programs would do as much...

I see that another moderator says that Adobe is the blame here. Perhaps so. Still I don't see why Adobe and Microsoft and Apple can't all get together to fix this. I mean, come on! Really! No comment from any of these places all these years? Just let people thrash abut? One gets the idea that this is intentional. Or some petty corporate turf war thing.
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