Help with Margins in Word

[garrett]

I'm going mad here. I have a client who wants me to design an A4 page
in word (I'm no expert), with an inserted graphic running flush to the
left hand margin, and all the way down the page. He then wants to type
into another text box thats to the right, filling the white space that
remains. He wants the option to type whatever he wants in this box,
make a PDF of the page, and send it to his clients, so it will act as a
kind of email press release, with the graphic running flush down the
left (with no margins!!!).

However, when I print it and take the option to save as PDF, I get a
white margin left and bottom. When I have a look at the print preview
in word, its the same thing. How do I rid myself of these margins?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Elliott Roper]

I'm going mad here. I have a client who wants me to design an A4 page
in word (I'm no expert), with an inserted graphic running flush to the
left hand margin, and all the way down the page. He then wants to type
into another text box thats to the right, filling the white space that
remains. He wants the option to type whatever he wants in this box,
make a PDF of the page, and send it to his clients, so it will act as a
kind of email press release, with the graphic running flush down the
left (with no margins!!!).

However, when I print it and take the option to save as PDF, I get a
white margin left and bottom. When I have a look at the print preview
in word, its the same thing. How do I rid myself of these margins?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Get a printer that prints to the edge of the page. They are rare.
If you do have one, update the printer drivers, test with another
application that it prints right to the margin and then resume your
fight with Word.

Word is *very* reluctant to print outside the margins. It is *very*
reluctant to set the margins past where it thinks the printer can
print.
So you might have to trick it. I once had partial success setting
margins on a Brother printer (2600CN) nearer the edge in
GraphicConverter than the printer instruction book said was possible.
The result somehow stuck in Word.

Once you have that sorted, a convenient way to fix a graphic right down
the side of every page is to put it in the page header. That's right, a
graphic in the header can be anywhere on the page.

 

[garrett]

Thanks for your advice. I can't seem to get any driver to load properly
now, so I'll have to keep persevering. The other problem is that my
client wants to make PDFs at his end, so I guess the driver won't
matter unless he has it.

The headers hint was a good one. I can't believe that word doesn't
allow for PDF making while and carrying colours and graphics right to
the edge. In this day and age it seems odd.

Keep the advice coming.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Thanks for your advice. I can't seem to get any driver to load properly
now, so I'll have to keep persevering. The other problem is that my
client wants to make PDFs at his end, so I guess the driver won't
matter unless he has it.

Yes and no. If the client's printer and printer driver margin settings
are different to yours, Word will break lines and paginate differently
to the way you see it. If the client is specifying Word and making his
own PDFs, get "Word does not do Page Layout and neither do I" written
into the contract.

The headers hint was a good one. I can't believe that word doesn't
allow for PDF making while and carrying colours and graphics right to
the edge. In this day and age it seems odd.

It is not (just) Word. It is a combination of OS X, your physical
printer, its drivers, the printer options you may or may not be able to
set in your print dialog, probably the phase of the moon and whether or
not you have sacrificed a goat.

I have a 15 year old Digital LN17 that prints right to the edge every
edge. Alongside it is a brand new Konical Minolta 2350 which will not
print within 5 mm of the sides and about 8 mm top and bottom.

There are a number of "Word" tricks to limit the different views each
recipient has of the document. One of them is "don't use narrow
margins".

You are between a rock and a hard place. If you really need to control
the layout of illustrations and typography precisely, Word is the wrong
program to use.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Garrett:

What Word is doing is "warning" you that the print image you are asking for
is outside the printer driver's page impression image. It's just a warning
-- click "Don't fix" and it will send the document to the printer in the
normal fashion.

What happens next, of course, will depend upon the physical printer. Many
of the ink-jet printers designed for photo printing will print full-bleed.
Most other printers won't.

If the client wants to make the PDFs, then ask the client which printer he
is using, an install a driver for it. You do not have to have the printer
physically installed. Word needs the printer driver to obtain the page
measurements that the printer uses. Word supplies this information to the
Printing Subsystem (Apple, in your case) which then scales the print image
and converts it into physical dots, one for each spot of ink on the page.
That process (known as "raster image processing") is performed by the
operating system.

If the printer the client is using is a PostScript printer, you can use the
driver for "any" PostScript printer, provided you get the paper size and the
DPI setting correct.

However: If the client is using a Macintosh, you will need to send the
fonts you used along with the document. If the client is using Windows,
there's little point in sending the fonts, since they will be a slightly
different size on Windows. If the client is using Windows, tell him he may
have to slightly adjust the document when he gets it before making his PDF.

To make that easy for him, do not over-fill your pages. This is about the
only time in Word that one would use hard page breaks. Normally, you allow
Word to split the pages appropriately for the printer and paper size and
fonts in use on the destination computer. However, when going from Mac to
PC, split the pages yourself manually, and leave at least one line of blank
space at the bottom of each page to allow for font rendering differences.

Hope this helps

Thanks for your advice. I can't seem to get any driver to load properly
now, so I'll have to keep persevering. The other problem is that my
client wants to make PDFs at his end, so I guess the driver won't
matter unless he has it.

The headers hint was a good one. I can't believe that word doesn't
allow for PDF making while and carrying colours and graphics right to
the edge. In this day and age it seems odd.

Keep the advice coming.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410