Hello again, I can't seem to insert my comments between your in thi
reply box, so I've quoted back your comments in context (without usin
), and my new comments begins with an asterisk (*) below.
In experimenting with the Page Setups in both Word X and Preview, I
found that when I selected my own home printer+tabloid+115% for the
Word .doc and Saved to PDF, I had mixed results. One time, the page
setup of the .pdf in Preview was maintained from the .doc as "Other
(11x17)" at 100%+the home printer. Two other times, the page setu of
the .pdf was switched on me to "A4" at 100%+the home printer. To ge it
back, I had to change the setting back to "Any Printer"+Tabloid, and
then switch the setting back again to my home printer and then th size
switched itself to "Other (11x 17)" from A4. Perhaps I have t manually
switch the printer setting back and forth to force the tabloi setting
to stick because the system knows that my home printer can' actually
print on Tabloid sized paper?
You wrote, "Exactly. Me, I'm an Australian living in Europe, so
wouldn't know what inch sized paper looked like any more, so some o
this advice is guessing. I had to get onto Google to find out tha
Tabloid is 11" * 17".
*Thanks for your heroic effort!
You: "That is enormous, approximately double the size of A4. What we i
the old West call A3+. If you have an A4 printer, there is no way it ca
print tabloid. No wonder you are having the trouble you describe."
*The reason why I set the paper to Tabloid size (17" x 11," a
landscape orientation) is because I am trying to create a brochure tha
is sized 15.58 inches wide by 8.25 inches long, which is A4 size + on
additional panel. (The brochure folds in half and then folds in hal
again). I thought it would be easier to use a Tabloid-sized pag
setting than creating a "Custom size." I tried the latter as well, an
had the same problem, with the .pdf reducing on me.
*I would use centimeters for my ruler, but I can't figure out how t
change the ruler into centimeters in Word. And the printing companie
over here in Malaysia work using inches from some held-over
19th-century Imperial system, I guess, or maybe because inches are th
defaults on their own PC systems. Not sure exactly why.
The scaling at 115% in the original .doc is always lost, I guess but
easily changed back. I couldn't fathom why at times, the .doc Page
Setup settings were maintained in the "Save to PDF" process and at
other times, they weren't. They are easy enough to change back. just
have to remember to do so, and I find it weird.
You: "The on-screen magnification in Word has no effect on the printe
document."
*The "115%" is NOT the on-screen magnification setting. You're talkin
about the "Zoom" setting under View. I'm talking about the "Scaling
setting in the Page Setup dialogue box. The scaling setting DOES effec
the printed size, not how the document looks onscreen.
*I thought the scaling would be part of the Page Setup specs that woul
get frozen into my .pdf, but the scaling isn't getting frozen in
Neither is my Page Size. I don't understand which settings, exactly
get frozen into the .pdf apart from the page breaks that you mentio
below. I think you're saying that the look of the Mac fonts don't eve
get frozen in because of the varying look of "resident fonts" on othe
people's printers. Do I understand you right?
Two questions remain: 1) If I "Save to PDF" using my home printer
setting in the Page Setup (rather than "Any Printer"), will the .pdf
file look different again (i.e. change) at the printing company when
they open the .pdf using their own print parameters (their ow printer)
on their PC? You wrote, "Print to PDF has [sic. is?] handled partl by
the OS, and it [the OS] and Word respects the page margins of the
chosen printer." Do you think that a Windows OS + CorelDraw wil also
respect the settings of my home printer "frozen" into the .pdf file?
You wrote: "PDF freezes the page breaks. When printing a PDF the use
may optionally choose to optically enlarge or shrink the type to fill a
larger or smaller paper size when using some PDF reader software. They
will not have any chance to re-flow the text onto different pages.
*At the moment, I can't get too excited about .pdfs maintaining
(freezing) my page breaks because my brochure is only one page long!
(Separate .pdf files for front and back.) For future jobs, this might
make me very happy! Are you saying with your last two sentences above
that on a PC, ANYTHING can change about the document EXCEPT for my page
breaks? What do you think I can expect to change on the PC at the
printing company?
*I think you're saying below that the look of the fonts will change,
too. I thought those stayed frozen in a .pdf, as if the type were
graphics, rather than text. That's why the printing company can print
my text from my .pdf and keep their look, even when they don't have the
fonts I need at all! (My fonts they don't have, like Stone Sans, are not
"substituted." For this particular design purpose, I can't simply use
TNR, Helvetica and Arial, unfortunately.)
2) Do you have any idea why when I do a "Print Preview" of a saved .pdf
WITHIN the Preview program, the resulting "Untitled" .pdf displayed is
reduced further? Yet more jelly?
You wrote: "If your original PDF were 'printed' with tabloid, and you
try to print the PDF on A4, then Preview will ask if you want to scale
or crop. If you choose scale, then your type will be roughly 71% of the
original height (A3 is square root of 2 times A4, in other words the
area is double - much the same as "letter" to "tabloid" I guess)"
*Elliott, even if I were to do a preview of a simple A4 letter saved as
a .pdf, the preview version that pops up in the "Untitled" window is
STILL a reduction. This "preview of a .pdf reduction" weirdness has
nothing to do with this tabloid issue (i.e., trying to squeeze a
tabloid-size document onto an A4 piece of paper).
*My version of Preview (2.0.1) isn't that polite. It's not asking me
whether I want to crop or scale to fit. It just shrinks the thing to
fit, regardless of what I want. If it gave me a choice in the matter,
then I wouldn't be so unhappy! Are you working off a different version
of Preview? I'm still on Jaguar....
*When I followed your advice and chose my home printer instead of "Any
Printer" in the Page Setup, then I was able to get a .pdf to save in
the original Tabloid size even though I can't print it at home. That
was a breakthrough in and of itself. Then, I changed the setting to A4
in the .pdf to print it at home, so I could at least proof my brochure
(at a reduced size) before sending it off to the printer (which I have
yet to do!)
Thanks a million. I'm amazed that this jelly business about Word isn't
more widely known (or at least by me, after using Word for almost 20
years).
You wrote: "Indeed. When most people are using the same size paper, and
the same versions of fonts, and the same printers, it never shows up. If
you posted hard copy snail mail it never showed up either.
"Now that there are more A4 printers in use in North America, and
printer and paper technology is rapidly moving to deal with photo
printing, and everyone does e-mail, most of us won't be able to go
another 20 years without getting bitten by it.
*Nice to know there are more A4 printers in use in North America (A4 is
a very nice size), but I'm not too concerned with those folks at the
moment! As I mentioned, I'm writing you from Malaysia, where there are
no 8 1/2" x 11" printers. Hah! (Not to pose as a Malaysian, though; I
am a North American over here, waiting for the winds of change to blow
over that continent, not that you asked!)
You wrote: "There are plenty of tricks for minimising the effects. If
you are preparing documents for use all over the world...."
*No, I'm not that important! My brochure is only for circulation in
this one town, but the information about formatting you provided is
nice to know.
... [I'm skipping parts I understand]...
You continue: "Consider your headers and footers in setting page
margins. If your page numbers disappear when printed, you have tried to
print them in the part of the paper your printer can't reach."
*Yes, that always happens with my longer documents! (Not this
brochure.) I can't control how far from the edge of the paper the page
number appears in the Header/Footer dialogue box (Insert->Page
Numbers->Format). Where can you adjust this distance?
You wrote: "Use common fonts. Arial and Times New Roman, (from the
Office distribution) will cause less 'cross platform' trouble with
differing line breaks and page breaks than Helvetica and Times as
delivered with your Mac. Most people cannot tell the difference between
Arial and Helvetica anyway. Both of them are boring and innocuous.
*Indeed, which is why I can't use them for this brochure! BTW, do you
happen to know what the difference is between "Times" on the Mac and
"Times New Roman"?
You continue: "Be aware that even when they have the same name, fonts
on different machines may be different. Also be aware that some (most)
printers have Arial, TNR, Times and Helvetica as resident fonts. There
is no guarantee they are the same as your Mac's. If you get a chance,
over-ride the resident fonts when printing. It used to be slightly
slower to send the fonts to the printer, but with 100 Mbit ethernet,
you won't notice any difference."
*You've lost me here. How do I override the "resident fonts" when
printing? Do you mean printing on my own printer? Or when sending a
.pdf file to a printing company, I should somehow "send over" my own
fonts to them? So, the printing company (or whomever my intended
recipient is) would have to somehow install MY fonts on their computer
before printing? Can you point me towards some directions on how to do
that?
Thanks again, Elliott. You're very kind.
