BUG!! Word 2016 fails to print margins correctly / messes up layout (Possible OpenType .otf Font bug)

Anonymous
2015-11-26T19:37:16+00:00

Hallo everyone,

I am having severe problems with Word 2016, as it does not print the document layout correctly as it somehow messes up the margin when printing.

NOTE: This happens when printing to Adobe Acrobat DC and my physical printer!

My document layout:

• no markup,

• custom margins (set to 1,27cm top / bottom and left / right - my printer can easily handle these...)

• no header or footer

• paper size set to A4 in all settings

IMAGE 1

The following is picture shows page 1 of my document in "Print Layout"-view. This is how I want the document to look when printed.

IMAGE 2

Here is a picture of the Print-preview menu. You can see that the Print preview still shows the document exactly as I want it. No problems. No funny settings selected. No "Print Markup" selected.

IMAGE 3

Now this is what happens when I print the actual document:

The bottom margin changes and suddenly the whole layout is messed up!

Please advise whether this a bug, or some setting I seem to wrongfully configure.

This is really annoying as I sometimes spend hours to get the layout and spacing in a document right, but then when it comes to printing the document, everything is messed up.

Thank you.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-09-04T17:53:34+00:00

    The great workaround of Suzanne "user printer metrics" has one big disadvantage: Word versions before 2013 use a different general table layout option, which obviously cannot be set to "get table layout option of Word 2013 and later " in combination with "user printer metrics".

    So I prefer as a workaround to use exact point sizes for line spacing in paragraph styles (including the at 'least' option) 

    For professionals it's not acceptable to get the only feedback by Microsoft "we working on this issue" from June 2017 (!), almost 2 years after this severe Word bug has been reported! 

    By the way in my Word 2016 version 16.0.8431.2046 (Office 365 1708  Build 8431.2046 Click and...) I seem to get real WYSIWYG for screen and PDF generation again using OTF fonts (I use Myriad Pro) - finally!

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-09-06T14:34:15+00:00

    Weird. I am running Word 2016 MSO (16.0.8326.2096) 64-bit (older than your version) but the updater says I have the latest version.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-09-06T15:31:15+00:00

    Same here. However, if he is part of the Office Insider program, he will have a newer (and potentially less stable) version. It would be wonderful to finally get this annoying problem fixed properly!

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-09-06T16:27:36+00:00

    However, if he is part of the Office Insider program, he will have a newer (and potentially less stable) version.

    Yes I think I am included as part of Office Insider. Obviously our IT department could include this solution for me as an option of the Office Update feature. By the way I use the 32 Bit version.

    And yes I think Microsoft has completely underestimated the problem. It may be that the current line spacing algorithm includes a faulty calculation method:  This calculation should be independant from any font but only defined by a multiple of the font size.

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  5. Anonymous
    2017-09-06T20:04:33+00:00

    The problem is more than just with the line spacing.  I first encountered the problem in a large (200+page) book when I noticed that the page numbers in the index were incorrect. I could see that the line spacing was different, so adjusted it to fit what Word appeared to be using. This helped, but the page numbers were still off. The different metrics being used by the two types of OpenType fonts cause very small changes in how the letters fit as well.

    I doubt if typographers would want Word to use a line spacing value (“leading”) based only on the point size. The leading value is part of the font’s design—although you can override it by specifying an exact line spacing in the Format Paragraph dialog. The “single” spacing option will use whatever was designed for the font, and other variants like the new default of 1.15 lines will use 115% of the built-in leading designed for the font face.

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