1 Page Doc on Windows Is 2 Pages On Mac

[DerbyDad03]

I am working on a document in Word 2010 for Windows that will be sent
to a user running Word 2011 on a Mac.

The document just fits on 1 page on my Windows machine(s), but when I
email it to the 2011 user and then open it on the Mac, it places the
last two lines of the document on the second page.

If I scale it to 96% in Page Setup it fits on one page.

I've checked the margins, the font and font sizes and everything
matches. I even checked that the Mac's default printer is the same
printer as my Windows machine.

Is this a known issue with 2010 vs. 2011 or is there some setting I
need to change on the Windows side so that the document will look the
same on both systems?

Thanks, and Happy New Year!

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Different printer driver.

 

[DerbyDad03]

Different printer driver.

That was my guess also, although the Mac is set up to print to the
same default my printer as my PC is - the USB printer attached to my
PC which the Mac prints to over the wireless network.

Does that mean that there is no way to know whether a document will
print on one page when sent to another Word user?

In this case, the document is a resume and we are trying to get it to
be one page long regardless of who we send it to. A resume loses a lot
of impact if the last 1 or 2 lines ends up on a second page. The
recipient will probably not know that it is a printer driver issue.
They will most likely think that the applicant set it up that way,
which could reflect badly on the applicant.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

The printer _driver_ is necessarily different on the two platforms.

Instead of using Line Spacing "single" (or whatever), use "exactly"
some value. That might even ensure that the same amount of space is
occupied in both situations and you won't have to scale it at all.

 

[Stefan Blom]

To fix that problem, you will have too send the résumé in PDF format.

 

[DerbyDad03]

The printer _driver_ is necessarily different on the two platforms.

Instead of using Line Spacing "single" (or whatever), use "exactly"
some value. That might even ensure that the same amount of space is
occupied in both situations and you won't have to scale it at all.






- Show quoted text -

Thanks...please don't take any of the following as an argument, I'm
simply pointing out what further testing has revealed. I do plan to
try your line spacing suggestion when I get home tonight and have
access to both the PC and the Mac. I'll post back once I've tried
that.

That said...

I know that the drivers are different on the 2 systems, but I assumed
that the drivers would know the physical properties of the printer
(white space required at the top of the sheet for the paper to feed,
lower limit of printable space at the bottom of the sheet, etc.) and
format the output to fit.

So, to see what would happen with some others drivers, I ran some more
tests.

This morning I have access to a PC that can be run under both a
resident XP OS and cloud based Windows 7. From this PC I can print to
a networked HP laser as well as a Brother laser printer attached to
the parallel port of the system. Both printers are accessible from
either OS environment. Obviously these printers, along with the
different OS's, would be using different drivers than my home XP
system with an HP inkjet and also different drivers than the Mac.

In all 4 cases, (2 different OS environments and 2 different printers)
the full-scale 1 page document printed on 1 page.

Again, this is not an argument against the Mac printer driver being
the root cause of the issue, I am simply pointing out that 5 different
PC based drivers have no problem fitting the document to one page.
Only the Mac, with it's different driver and different version of Word
prints the document on 2 pages.

As I said, I will play with the line spacing this evening and report
back with the results.

 

[DerbyDad03]

Thank you.

I will investigate that solution tonight when I have access to both
the PC and the Mac.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

In all 4 cases, (2 different OS environments and 2 different printers)
the full-scale 1 page document printed on 1 page.

But you don't know whether they are otherwise identical -- even in
vertical spacing they might differ, but not enough to send a line to
the next page. (BTW, do you have Widow/Orphan Control turned on, and/
or Keep with Next?)

 

[DerbyDad03]

Good point on possible minor vertical spacing differences. I compared
the 4 documents by holding them up to the light and attempting to
align the text.

The 2 copies sent to the HP printer from XP and Win 7 line up
perfectly with each other. The 2 sent to the Brother printer from XP
and Win 7 line up perfectly with each other.

However, the Brother output is slightly longer than the HP output by
about 1/2 the height of a size 11 Times New Roman line. As you said,
perhaps not enough to push anything to the next page.

I should add that the Mac forces 2 full lines to the next page so the
difference must be much more than 1/2 the height of a size 11 Times
New Roman line. I'll check that out tonight.

I also checked the drivers under both OS's and here's what's
interesting: The Win 7 machine appears to use the same driver for both
the HP and Brother laser printer: Citrix Universal Printer. The XP
side uses 2 different drivers, a Brother driver specific to my series
of Brother printer and an HP Universal PS Driver for the HP laser.
Yet, as I mentioned, documents printed to the HP printer line up
perfectly with each other as do documents printed to the Brother
printer. In other words, the Citrix Universal Printer and Brother
specific driver line up perfectly when used with the Brother printer
and the Citrix Universal Printer and HP Universal PS driver line up
perfectly when used with the HP printer. However, documents printed
with the common driver (Citrix Universal Printer) do not line up when
comparing the Brother output to the HP output. That would point to the
printers being the issue, not the driver. However, on the Mac, the
document _opens_ on 2 pages which leads us back to the driver
differences - or perhaps something else.

re: "Do you have Widow/Orphan Control turned on, and/or Keep with
Next?"

On both XP/2003 and Win 7/2010 on my work machine the Widow/Orphan
Control and Keep With Next boxes are unchecked. I'll take a look at
the settings on my home XP/2010 and Mac/2011 machines tonight. Perhaps
that is the issue.

Thanks again!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Send the résumé as a PDF.

"DerbyDad03" wrote in message

Different printer driver.

That was my guess also, although the Mac is set up to print to the
same default my printer as my PC is - the USB printer attached to my
PC which the Mac prints to over the wireless network.

Does that mean that there is no way to know whether a document will
print on one page when sent to another Word user?

In this case, the document is a resume and we are trying to get it to
be one page long regardless of who we send it to. A resume loses a lot
of impact if the last 1 or 2 lines ends up on a second page. The
recipient will probably not know that it is a printer driver issue.
They will most likely think that the applicant set it up that way,
which could reflect badly on the applicant.

 

[DerbyDad03]

Creating a PDF has it's merits, but at the moment we are in the
editing mode. My daughter and I worked on the resume on my Windows
machine and got it to fit on one page. I then emailed it to her for
some further editing and that is when we found that the Mac split it
into 2 pages.

Since she will be emailing it out and posting it on application
websites, she will need to scale it down to fit on one page before
creating the PDF.

Yes, that will ensure that the document will display/print on one page
for all recipients, but it will also be uneditable. If she sends the
original Word document back to me for review/editing, I might be able
to get to fit on one page, but she might have to scale it again to get
it back to one page before creating the PDF. For example, one version
fit one page on my Windows machine. She scaled it down to 96% to fit
on one page on her Mac and emailed it back to me. I opened it up on a
different Windows machine and I can fit 4 more lines on one page. If I
send that back to her, she'll need to scale it down even further.

She is a college senior applying for grad schools and assitantships.
The resume evolves as she completes internships and other activities
so I think we may be in editing mode for a while. It just a pain to
have it appear differently as we pass it back and forth.

Thanks!

 

[Stefan Blom]

As stated elsewhere, keep the Word format as long as you are still editing
the document, and then convert to PDF.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP




"DerbyDad03" wrote in message

 

[DerbyDad03]

Stefan,

Please understand that I am not pushing back on your suggestion, and
that is most likely what we will do.

However, the issue still remains that we could spend substantial
amount of time getting the document to look the way we want on one
system, only to find that we have to change the actual look of the
document because of the scaling issue. Scaling it to fit on one page
on the Mac ensures that it fits on one page when creating the PDF on
the Mac, but it also impacts the side margins, font size (in
appearance only), etc.

In general, it's just a pain to have to deal with the issue since we
never know how the document will look until we do the editing, get it
to one page on her Mac and see how it looks. We have to take it all
the way to the point where creating the PDF is just a few clicks away
so that we know what the PDF will look like. Since most of the updates
will be done on her Mac once she goes back to school, the final edit
and PDF creation is best done on her Mac. When the edits I do screw it
up for her Mac, we end up with the back and forth fixes. Since I am
(slightly) more proficient in Word than she is, I end up doing things
like syle changes, tab alignments, etc.

Maybe I should just buy a Mac! Oh, but wait...then I wouldn't know
what it will look like on a Windows machine...unless I create a
PDF. ;-)

 

[Stefan Blom]

I do understand the point you are trying to make. But Word simply isn't
designed to give you full control over page breaks and text positioning. For
that, you'll need page layout software. A simple page layout application is
Publisher; an expensive one is InDesign...

No matter what you use, you may have to resort to PDFs in the end, so that
"everybody" can read it!

Good luck!

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP




"DerbyDad03" wrote in message