Number of Pages changes between PC Word 2007 and Mac Office 2008

[VK]

I have a document that I would love to be able to work on both my laptop Mac
and also my desktop PC. The bulk of my work is on the PC because I have
Adobe Acrobat installed there that will convert it to .pdf for publishing
reasons. (The .pdf produced by microsoft has not been confirmed to work with
the printers yet so I don't want to waste time experimenting).

I want to be able to work on the document on my laptop Mac while out of the
house.

However, I found that my document grew by 10 pages when I moved it to my
Mac. I checked all the margins, all the margins of the headers/footers.
Nothing has changed as far as I can see except for the increase in the number
of pages. The document has 360 pages on the PC and 370 on the Mac.

Somewhere there must be a change in formatting between the two computers but
it's not obvious to my naked eye.

Am I the only one that moves between two platforms? Am I the only one
encountering this problem and finding it an issue?

Since I am publishing the document, the number of pages can't change as that
will change the spine width .
I have the same Adobe font installed on both computers but of course, the
right format for the right computer.

I asked this question on the Mac Office Forums but no one answered. This
forum is much better at giving feedback.

Hope someone can give me a hint as it would simplify my life a lot more!

By the way, the number of pages increases between the two computers even
though I haven't even touched the document yet.

Thanks

 

[Stefan Blom]

See http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/TextReflow.htm.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi V.K.,

Are you setting both versions to use the same/equivalent PDF printer? Word takes cues from the printer driver on how to layout the
document (i.e. it uses text reflow, not page layout parameters) so you may not be able to always achieve an exact match between
versions, machines or editions on document layout. Word 2007 doesn't have the Word 2008 Publishing view and doesn't support all of
the font/Open type features such as ligatures that Word:mac does. If you're using those advanced features, that can impact the move
between the two products.

Besides the margins be sure to check the page setup choices for auto paper resizing and for the sizes of space allowed for
headers/footers.

Check also the definitions for styles on both to see if they're the same and as far as line and character spacing and font size.

Also see if Word for Windows is actually using the font you named by opening the document and then going to
Office Button=>Word Options=>Advanced=>Show document content
and click on [Font Substitution]

You may also want to check the compatability settings there.

Setting a keyboard shortcut in
Office Button=>Word Options=>Customize=>Keyboard Shortcuts
and under All Commands choose 'ToggleOptimizeForLayout'

Each of these can make some small differences that could add up.

Does Office 2007 'run' in a virtual machine on the Mac? I don't know if that would be another alternative to look into.

===============
I have a document that I would love to be able to work on both my laptop Mac
and also my desktop PC. The bulk of my work is on the PC because I have
Adobe Acrobat installed there that will convert it to .pdf for publishing
reasons. (The .pdf produced by microsoft has not been confirmed to work with
the printers yet so I don't want to waste time experimenting).

I want to be able to work on the document on my laptop Mac while out of the
house.

However, I found that my document grew by 10 pages when I moved it to my
Mac. I checked all the margins, all the margins of the headers/footers.
Nothing has changed as far as I can see except for the increase in the number
of pages. The document has 360 pages on the PC and 370 on the Mac.

Somewhere there must be a change in formatting between the two computers but
it's not obvious to my naked eye.

Am I the only one that moves between two platforms? Am I the only one
encountering this problem and finding it an issue?

Since I am publishing the document, the number of pages can't change as that
will change the spine width .
I have the same Adobe font installed on both computers but of course, the
right format for the right computer.

I asked this question on the Mac Office Forums but no one answered. This
forum is much better at giving feedback.

Hope someone can give me a hint as it would simplify my life a lot more!

By the way, the number of pages increases between the two computers even
though I haven't even touched the document yet.

Thanks >>
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[V]

Thank you for replying so promptly and with so much detail.

In order to convert to .pdf, I "print to the .pdf" driver. It's not a "real
printer", is it? Forgive me my ignorance but I haven't actually printed out
my document yet. I just need to convert it to .pdf. I "print to the Adobe
driver" to convert to .pdf. How can I set my document to print to the same
driver on both computers when it's not a real printer?

I'm pretty sure my document is not using any advance features of Word 2007.
It's a basic manuscript. I would like to work on it on my Mac and work on
spelling and formatting details. I need to keep the manuscript to exactly
360 pages so it's useless to work on my Mac because the number of pages
changes when I go back to my PC. I've already prepared the spine width of
my book cover, so I don't want to do that all over again so I want to keep it
to 360 pages always.

I have check all margins, paper sizes set up in the printer, spaces for
headers/footers.

I will check my styles but that will be very tedious. Is there a way to
print out all the styles I've used on one computer? That would streamline
the process a great deal.

Will the fonts take up the same amount of space on both computers? I'm
using Adobe Garamond on both computers. I will double check the font usage
in the document on both computers.

Please explain what togglng to optimize layout will do?

I had thought about running windows on my Mac but am running out of
harddrive space as it is.

Thanks for the suggestions. At least I know I've done my best to make it
work.


"

 

[Graham Mayor]

There is only a slim possibility of the documents being formatted
*identically* when opened on two different platforms. The chances of the
available printer drivers - even the Adobe driver - being identical, let
alone the font outlines used by the two systems, that discrepancies are
almost inevitable. The reasons are covered at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TextReflow.htm

The Adobe 'printer' driver uses the print system to create a graphical
representation of the document and can be considered as a true 'printer'
driver that prints to file. Word uses the active printer driver to format
the document. Set the Adobe driver as the active printer to allow the
document to reformat to the capabilities of that driver. With luck the Mac
version will be an accurate copy of the PC version and that will help
enormously in overcoming the reformatting issue.
--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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