Transparency in text box

[Dan Kennedy]

I'm putting together an ad for my wife's photo business. At the bottom of
the photo, I have some white text, with the text box color set to "No Fill."

Now here's where things fall apart. You can't read the white text very well,
so I changed "No Fill" to black, and then set the transparency to 25
percent. It looks perfect on the screen. But when I print it out, the text
box color is a mottled gray mess that looks like Swiss cheese. And when I
PDF it and take a look at the ad with Apple Preview or Acrobat Reader, I get
exactly the same problem - in other words, it's not my printer.

The only thing I've been able to do that works is simply to make the text
box black. But that's not as attractive as the transparency effect I'm
aiming for.

Any thoughts?

Thank you.

 

[matt neuburg]

I'm putting together an ad for my wife's photo business. At the bottom of
the photo, I have some white text, with the text box color set to "No Fill."

Now here's where things fall apart. You can't read the white text very well,
so I changed "No Fill" to black, and then set the transparency to 25
percent. It looks perfect on the screen. But when I print it out, the text
box color is a mottled gray mess that looks like Swiss cheese. And when I
PDF it and take a look at the ad with Apple Preview or Acrobat Reader, I get
exactly the same problem - in other words, it's not my printer.

The only thing I've been able to do that works is simply to make the text
box black. But that's not as attractive as the transparency effect I'm
aiming for.

Any thoughts?

My thought is: why on earth are you doing this with Word? m.

 

[CyberTaz]

Is the text box beneath the image or overlapping it?

Rather than text, how about using WordArt?

Still not sure you'll get the results you're looking for from Word.
Something like InDesign, QuarkXpress or even PhotoShop (Elements) would
be able to handle something like this much more effectively |:>)

 

[Dan Kennedy]

Thank you for recommending $600 programs. ;-) Although I do have Elements,
so I should try that.

I have since learned that the transparency problem I encountered is a "known
issue." Microsoft blames OS X, but no doubt MS ignored Apple's programming
guidelines.

DK

 

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

Set the fill to 25 per cent grey and the transparency to 0.

Word can't render transparency properly to a printer.

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