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
    2012-11-21T11:45:04+00:00

    I hope your comments are noticed by Microsoft in here. After having a pretty good look around, the only things I have been able to do that might in some cases work are

    a. the approach in

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macword/saving-mixed-layout-documents-as-pdf-again/65f45c2a-6de2-4750-b8a5-d311f9338cd1

    b. the "print each section to a separate .pdf Applescript at the end of

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macword/applescript-to-save-sections-of-single-docx-as/af8f92d5-56a9-43ab-af3e-3aed4b8b43e5

    If you haven't tried them, I suppose they might be worth attempting, but I suspect neither of those copes with the problems you have reported, and obviously the ideal would be for the conversion to PDF to be in the "It just works" category.

    The impression I have from reading the comments of others, particularly MVPs, here, is that Microsoft has shown no sign of providing a solution for this, and in that situation, I would suspect that even an MVP could not influence Microsoft in any useful way without having a solid commercial case for change. To me, that leaves

    a. "warranty support" via the normal support channels (where they will probably just say that the feature is "by design" or constrained in some way by Mac,

    b. contacting via the Feedback option in Word Help, which I have never found to be fruitful but cannot do any harm.

    SInce Microsoft has written code (or perhaps bought it in, I don't know) that does this stuff on Windows, I suppose we can always hope that that code wil be ported to Mac. But if it relies on the Windows printing subsystem to do any of its work, even that may not be easy).

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-11-21T06:25:39+00:00

    Can we solicit a response from someone in Microsoft please. This issue was first raised 5 months ago and as several have pointed out it is an extremely annoying bug. It is disappointing in the delays in response or any real progress to a solution. 

    Microsoft.. this Office for Mac blog is of no value to your customers if it is only populated with a stream of users highlighting the same issue or frustrations and no positive and productive vendor response

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