PDF problem

[david gleeson]

Mac OS x 10.3.2

Word for Mac x service rls 1


When I choose print, print box comes up, I hit 'save as PDF'

Instead of creating one pdf file, it creates several.

How do I make it save just one single document?

Thanks, dg

 

[Elliott Roper]

Mac OS x 10.3.2

Word for Mac x service rls 1


When I choose print, print box comes up, I hit 'save as PDF'

Instead of creating one pdf file, it creates several.

This is a well known misfeature. Some section breaks, but not all, bust
the document up on printing. It is much more noticeable on save as PDF.
To be fair, it may be Apple's fault, at least partially.

The fix is to avoid section breaks that change page orientation or
margins, and maybe a couple of other things depending on the phase of
the moon.

You may be able to stitch them together in another utility. The ones I
have looked at are expensive or don't work.

 

[david gleeson]

Thanks for the prompt response.

Section break is indeed the problem. But I need to use section break to
separate chapters in a 200 page document.

Anyone know of a workaround?

Thanks, dg

 

[Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T.]

This is a well known misfeature. Some section breaks, but not all, bust
the document up on printing. It is much more noticeable on save as PDF.
To be fair, it may be Apple's fault, at least partially.

The fix is to avoid section breaks that change page orientation or
margins, and maybe a couple of other things depending on the phase of
the moon.

You may be able to stitch them together in another utility. The ones I
have looked at are expensive or don't work.

I'm tired of a Company creating software for Mac Blameing Apple for defects in
there product. And I am tired of it.

OSX IS UNIX WITH THE APPLE INTERFACE ON TOP. UNIX HAS BEEN AROUND IN SOME FORM
OR ANOTHER SINCE AT LEAST 1965, MAYBE EARLIER.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE DEVELOPERS HAVEN"T LEARNED "UNIX".

I applogize for blowing up and shouting. But I'm tired of software companies,
coming across bugs and saying "its Apple's Fault".

Its the software companies fault for not learning and keeping up with the OSes.
Be It Apple, MS, UNIX, Linux, or whatever.

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[Elliott Roper]

I'm tired of a Company creating software for Mac Blameing Apple for defects in
there product. And I am tired of it.

OSX IS UNIX WITH THE APPLE INTERFACE ON TOP. UNIX HAS BEEN AROUND IN SOME FORM
OR ANOTHER SINCE AT LEAST 1965, MAYBE EARLIER.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE DEVELOPERS HAVEN"T LEARNED "UNIX".

I applogize for blowing up and shouting. But I'm tired of software companies,
coming across bugs and saying "its Apple's Fault".

Its the software companies fault for not learning and keeping up with the OSes.
Be It Apple, MS, UNIX, Linux, or whatever.

Simmer down. Apparently FIlemaker does the same thing as Word. That
leads me to believe that both are making the same misuse of something
in OS X. It is hard to make the claim that Apple's print to PDF is pure
Unix. The Unix underpinnings of OS X are way...yyy beneath print to
PDF.

I said 'at least partially'. Was that not fair in the circumstances?

I know what it is like trying to keep your product up to date while the
OS shifts under your feet, so as much as it goes against the grain, one
does have to cut those slap-happy Redmond billionaires a little bit of
slack.

Now I have your attention. Why the f*** have we gone so long with a
broken save as... and lack of Unicode? Of course every one should keep
up with the OS. At the price we pay for Office we should have gotten a
far better deal with updates to track OS X.

Happy now?

Back to David's problem.
Make sure that the section breaks do not change margins or page
orientation, page size or whatever. By treading on the problem like
walking on eggshells you might be able to get your PDFs to hang
together.

I tried a document with section breaks without any of those and it
printed to PDF as one.

If your are trying to lay out and print a long document with decent
typography and running heads and so on, then Word is not not the right
product for you. It is designed for the Powerpoint generation of ransom
note producers.

If you have not already used up your free 30 day trial for Adobe
InDesign 2, try flowing your Word document into that.

Sadly the full product is even more expensive than Office, and it is
not the most elegant thing to do word processing in either.

Grr! Maybe I should go the full curmudgeon, and edit in Emacs and set
in TeX?

Then I won't have to deal with all those horrible customers and I can
starve in my garret in splendid isolation.

 

[david gleeson]

(not sure if it's correct newsgroup etiquette to reply at top or bottom of
msg string?)

Elliot,
Thanks again for the response - seems to have stirred up a bit of a hornet's
nest. I use page break to separate chapters - that way I can jump between
chapters by choosing the arrows (bottom right hand corner of document) after
selecting 'Browse by section'. Wish there was a better way of doing it.
In any case, so far as I know there's no change in page orientation, margins
etc after insert/break/section break (next page), at least none that's
intended.

Regards, david

 

[Elliott Roper]

(not sure if it's correct newsgroup etiquette to reply at top or bottom of
msg string?)

Me, I'm an intersperser. Put comments after the bit they refer to, and
snip like crazy.
Others here, like Beth, prefer to top post. The accepted truce here is
to continue in the same style as the conversation progresses, although
I seem to have mucked this one up. There are one or two mail and
posting programs that make it easier for some people to top post and
quote the previous history in a vast lump at the bottom.

Elliot,
Thanks again for the response - seems to have stirred up a bit of a hornet's
nest. I use page break to separate chapters - that way I can jump between
chapters by choosing the arrows (bottom right hand corner of document) after
selecting 'Browse by section'. Wish there was a better way of doing it.
In any case, so far as I know there's no change in page orientation, margins
etc after insert/break/section break (next page), at least none that's
intended.

Regards, david

No, this is the usual hornet's nest. It gets pretty lively in here
sometimes, but nearly everyone else is pleasant and rational, so I can
get away with being otherwise - most of the time.

Getting PDFs to print across section breaks is very fragile. I did some
tests this afternoon while I was thinking about another problem. I was
sure what I did (fooling with page numbering styles in different
sections) was enough to break it, but it worked fine.

There is one trick still to try. Lobotomize your document.
Select the whole thing except the very last paragraph mark then copy
and paste it into a fresh one. See if that prints to PDF in one lump.

Lobotomize? Yep, just about all the cunning stuff is having a party in
a data structure hiding in the last paragraph mark. There may be some
history in there that convinces Word to bust your PDFs apart just to be
safe. It could be something as innocent as a remembered footer that
spilled into a second line and tricked Word into believing the margins
had changed for all time.

Not a very happy state of affairs, but that's the way it is.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi David:

No, you do not need to use a Section Break to separate Chapters. You "can"
but you don't have to.

Investigate the use of STYLEREF fields to create dynamic running headers.
You can then get away without section breaks.

But Elliott's point is also valid: rathe section breaks do not have to alter
the page settings, and if they do not, you won't get multiple files.\


Cheers

Thanks for the prompt response.

Section break is indeed the problem. But I need to use section break to
separate chapters in a 200 page document.

Anyone know of a workaround?

Thanks, dg

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

(not sure if it's correct newsgroup etiquette to reply at top or bottom of
msg string?)

It varies...

Elliot,
Thanks again for the response - seems to have stirred up a bit of a hornet's
nest. I use page break to separate chapters - that way I can jump between
chapters by choosing the arrows (bottom right hand corner of document) after
selecting 'Browse by section'. Wish there was a better way of doing it.
In any case, so far as I know there's no change in page orientation, margins
etc after insert/break/section break (next page), at least none that's
intended.

Oh, well, you are in luck! You don't need section breaks to be able to do
that, so you might be able to take them out.

If you format the title beginning each chapter with a Heading style, you can
"browse by heading" instead.

There are more ways to work around this, but post back and let me know
whether you have ventured into Styles and Macros at all before I get into
them.

DM