Repost: Help with row shading / PDF output from mail merge (no attachment)

[Lee Harris]

Posted this to the formatting group, but it's not getting through. Also
tried to post it here, same problem. Am trying again without the attachment.
Please email me if you can help, I can send you the files described.

<snipped>Attached is zip file containing all files mentioned here.>

Basically I have a word document set up to mail merge with an excel file to
produce cards for a tabletop sports game.

I have two problems


i) if you look on the word file (the excel file is included so that the word
document doesnt complain!), the card for Bernard Berrian for example, the
shading works fine in WORD - no overlap, but if you look at the PDF version,
the rows "overlap" a bit, the grey shading covers up bits of the rows above
and below.

To get to PDF all I'm doing is changing my printer from Lexmark to the
"Adobe Acrobat PDF Writer" option, and yes, I've checked the paper and
margin settings so it's not that.

Does anyone know why the output in PDF is not the same as in WORD? why is
word keeping the rows separate, and PDF isnt?


this leads to my 2nd (and main) problem

ii) where is the setting for those rows that are shaded? I'm buggered if I
can remember how I did it. I've tried "format, borders and shading" and
clearing shading from cell, table, paragraph, text - to no avail. I cannot
work out where to turn this shading option off now, which I need to do to
see if the PDF output is better. It's not good to have rows obscured!


please, help if you can, I am "power user" of the PC, experienced programmer
etc, but sometimes it seems all too easy to be reduced to a head scratching
idiot when trying to do something you intuitively feel should be very
obvious.

 

[Tim Murray]

i) if you look on the word file (the excel file is included so that the word
document doesnt complain!), the card for Bernard Berrian for example, the
shading works fine in WORD - no overlap, but if you look at the PDF version,
the rows "overlap" a bit, the grey shading covers up bits of the rows above
and below.

To get to PDF all I'm doing is changing my printer from Lexmark to the
"Adobe Acrobat PDF Writer" option, and yes, I've checked the paper and
margin settings so it's not that.

PDFWriter is a non-PostScript tool and mercifully, Adobe has dropped it. Your
best PDF will come from distilling a PostScript file made with the Adobe PDF
printer instance.

Does anyone know why the output in PDF is not the same as in WORD? why is
word keeping the rows separate, and PDF isnt?


this leads to my 2nd (and main) problem

ii) where is the setting for those rows that are shaded? I'm buggered if I
can remember how I did it. I've tried "format, borders and shading" and
clearing shading from cell, table, paragraph, text - to no avail. I cannot
work out where to turn this shading option off now, which I need to do to
see if the PDF output is better. It's not good to have rows obscured!

Try the settings in the Table > Table Properties menu.

 

[Lee Harris]

PDFWriter is a non-PostScript tool and mercifully, Adobe has dropped it.
Your
best PDF will come from distilling a PostScript file made with the Adobe
PDF
printer instance.

how do I achieve this?

 

[Lee Harris]

Tim,

I still cannot access where this alternate row shading is coming from. Can
you take a look at the files here (link) and let me know how I can get rid
of the shading

http://www.bombersgolf.com/transfer/shadingprob.zip

cheers
Lee

 

[Peter Jamieson]

The chances are that your formatting problems have something to do with the
Monotype font you are using. Perhaps it doesn't happen on your system, but
when I open the document here, I see a message saying that the document
cannot be edited because it contains a read-only embedded font. Attempts to
print to the Adobe Acrobat printer here just result in (shaded!) garbage
characters in the .pdf.

Although I'm just guessing at this point, the thing is that Acrobat does
tend to want to use its own PostScript fonts and may be substituting a font
that does not have quite the same "metrics" as the Monotype one - maybe that
is the source of the problem.

(I can't actually change the document so I can't test anything, but if I
could, I'd change the font to something like Arial, re-Acrobat the output,
and see if that fixes the problem).

As for "how you applied the shading", the chances are that you used a "Table
Style", which you can probably modify by selecting the table and using
Table|Table Autoformat.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Lee Harris]

As for "how you applied the shading", the chances are that you used a
"Table Style", which you can probably modify by selecting the table and
using Table|Table Autoformat.

Peter Jamieson

Hi Peter
thanks for the reply - I don't think it's table auto format, tried that, no
luck. If I edit the font to a standard one and reupload the file could you
take a peek? It's really important that if PDF is going to have aprob with
these special fonts, I remove the shading! (if you have any tips on a
standard fixed width font that works at 6 point level for those cards, I'd
also be appreciative!)
cheers
Lee

 

[Lee Harris]

here it is with courier new. The shading is now driving me mental. Where the
heck have I set it?

I can see in the list of styles that it seems to have acquired a 5% grey
pattern, but these arent alternate rows, merely alternate lines within the
cell of a table.

please see file here and HELP ME AAARRGGHHHH

http://www.bombersgolf.com/transfer/shade.doc

now with courier new font.

how on earth can it be possible for a PC "power user" (programmer) to not be
able to fathom this out!

 

[Tim Murray]

how do I achieve this?

Do you have real Acrobat, or, a competitive product?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Re. the shading, I don't know where you set it, but to get rid of it I would
a. check each style (and some of them are character styles and augment
"Normal") and remove the 5% grey from the styles
b. select each paragraph - actually, I found myself displaying the field
codes, selecting each one, and removing the 5% direct formatting shading
that appears to have been applied, using Format|Borders and Shading.
However, it is late here and I started losing the plot some time ago...

I haven't really made any progress with the issue of shading+Acrobat. May be
able to look again tomorrow.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Lee Harris]

Do you have real Acrobat, or, a competitive product?

real Acrobat

 

[Lee Harris]

Further info...

When I used the "Reveal Formatting" option in Word, I can see where the
shading is but not how to remove it

it's under

"Font" there is a shading
Pattern: Clear (Gray ~ 5%)

however, I can't seem to fix this with Format->Font on the selected grey
lines, nor can I click the "shading" link in the reveal formatting list on
the right of the screen and find any way to change it

this is INSANE. sorry, but it's just rubbish isn't it. It's more secretive
than the CIA.

 

[Lee Harris]

Further info...

When I used the "Reveal Formatting" option in Word, I can see where the
shading is but not how to remove it

it's under

"Font" there is a shading
Pattern: Clear (Gray ~ 5%)

however, I can't seem to fix this with Format->Font on the selected grey
lines, nor can I click the "shading" link in the reveal formatting list on
the right of the screen and find any way to change it

this is INSANE. sorry, but it's just rubbish isn't it. It's more secretive
than the CIA.

OK, once I'd identified the style type that wasnt shaded I managed to apply
that to all shaded rows to fix it. Right pain in the arse though. Still have
no idea how I got this shading in there, nor how to "properly" reset/remove
it

 

[Peter Jamieson]

this is INSANE. sorry, but it's just rubbish isn't it. It's more
I certainly haven't see a Word "World Fact Book"

I doubt if there is a "proper" way to detect it or remove it - for example,
I don't think you can detect shading in the Find/Replace dialog. Here I
noticed that unchecking Tools|Options|Edit|"Use smart paragraph selection"
means that you can select a paragraph without its mark much more easily,
which in this case means that when you use Format|Borders and shading, you
get to see the Grey-5% rather than the "No fill" you see when the paragraph
mark is selected as well.

But has removing the shading has also solved your "overlap" problem or not?

Peter Jamieson

 

[Peter Jamieson]

OK, I have now been through a number of tests. Here, I haven't been able to
do anything that creates an obvious difference in the output between a real
printer and the Adobe printer.

Broadly speaking, the main problem I see here is that the grey shading in
the 2nd column containing text "Lg/Lg/33" chops off the bottom of the tail
of the Q above (same for column 4). That problem does not show in Print
Preview on either a "real" printer or the Adobe PDF printer, but it shows
when I actually print, both to the real printer (had to get my magnifying
glass out to check that one) and the Adobe printer.

If I remove the shading, it looks to me as if there is a tiny bit of
truncation of the tail of the Q, but it's less obvious than when the shading
is there.

The only way I can remove the problem altogether is to change the line
spacing to (say) Multiple 1 (which Word treats as "Single") rather than
Multiple 0.9. In fact Multiple 0.95 seems to be OK as well, but that will
probably depend on the actual font metrics of the font you are using and the
extent to which the characters actually used in your lines extend above or
below the line (e.g. in a given font, "Q" and "/" might or might not cause
problems.

However, if I start with your "original" file with the Monospace font, I
have to copy/paste the text into a new document before I can modify it, and
at that point, Word substitutes another fixed-pitch font with rather
different characteristics from the Monospace font (I am assuming that Word
is showing me the Monospace font correctly in the original document). In
this case it is a OpenType font called Consolas (which I suspect comes with
Office 2007 - previously I think Word would probably have used Lucida
Console). Consolas happens to have quite a large tail on the Q which may be
confusing matters.

However, if I try to Acrobat your "original" file (with the Monospace font),
Acrobat cannot embed the font (because although font information is embedded
in the Word document, the font is not actually installed here, and Acrobat
cannot embed it. Of course Acrobat actually needs to embed font information
in order to be able to do what it does). So here, Acrobat substitutes its
Courier Type 1 PS font, and does something weird with the encoding. However,
I assume that on your system, Acrobat embeds the correct font. It may be
worth opening the output .pdf and having a look at File|"Document
properties"|Fonts to see if that is the case. if it isn't perhaps Acrobat is
substituting a font, in which case I would have a look in Word's Adobe PDF
menu, Change conversion settings, Advanced settings, Fonts. If "Embed all
fonts" isn't checked - as I suspect it is by default - maybe it should be.

However, that's about all I can see here, and I'm certainly no expert in
this area.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Forgot: I also tried checking/unchecking Word Tools|Compatibility|"Use
printer metrics to lay out document", but it seemed to make no difference
here. Might be worth trying there, and of course you can click the Font
substititions button while you're there and make sure there's nothing
unexpected in there.

Peter Jamieson

 

[Tim Murray]

real Acrobat

Acrobat installs a printer called Adobe PDF and an application called
Distiller. Change to that printer and "print to file", then distill that
resulting file. Word will save a file whose extension is PRT, and Distiller
looks for PS. You can either (a) put quotes around the file name
"myfile.ps"; or (b) let it print myfile.prt, and in Distiller, force it to
open myfile.prt.