Trouble pdfing Word 2010 documents

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In line with our quality accreditation, I have to mark any changes to our documents with change bars to the left of the page and inserted text has to be shown in blue. This works fine until I come to pdf them. When I save the document in pdf format, it seems to be a very hit and miss affair as to whether the blue text shows in the pdf or not. The change bars show fine, sometimes the blue shows up blue, sometimes it is black. I have tried pdf’ing different documents, each several times over and I get a different result every time. I have tried going into options when trying to save as a pdf and trying out different options. I thought it may be something to do with whether the document had been originated in Word 2003, rather than 2010, but there seems to be no definitive reason why it is so flakey. The blue text always shows in blue if I just print directly to the Adobe PDF printer, but then I lose the links in the contents and other section links. Our documents can be fairly lengthy so the contents hyperlinks and other section links are essential.

Am I doing something wrong? Why do I get the blue text sometimes when I pdf and not others? I have asked our IT person to come and have a look and he too is mystified. Is this a well known fault?

I have Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard installed on my machine. Does this make any difference? Should I upgrade?

Any advice would be much appreciated

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Lane,

Give PrimoPDF a go. It’s free, works well with office versions {although I don’t have 2010} and installs as a printer choice.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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In line with our quality accreditation, I have to mark any changes to our documents with change bars to the left of the page and inserted text has to be shown in blue. This works fine until I come to pdf them. When I save the document in pdf format, it seems to be a very hit and miss affair as to whether the blue text shows in the pdf or not.

Do you use the PDF Maker add-in to create the PDF? You also could try printing to the Distiller print driver, although this does not give full functionality with internal links.

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It seems that the docs are being saved in Word 2010’s new built-in PDF file maker (ie. Save as type PDF(*.pdf)). Is that how the PDF docs are being created?

The “Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard” is an older version of Adobe Reader? The newest version is Adobe Reader X (10.0.1)?

There are many alternatives to Adobe for PDF Creators/Readers/Printing.

If Adobe is preferred for viewing and printing PDF’s, consider trying a newer version of Adobe.

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G’day

Any PDF generator that “prints” to PDF will lose the links. (PrimaPDF etc). Acrobat needs to be installed AFTER Word 2010 and then becomes the PDF Maker add-in. That will preserve the links and offers other features that the Word 2010 PDF module does not have. However that won’t work with the old Acrobat 7 since Word has changed the way add-ins are handled. You need Acrobat 9 or X. Acrobat 8 worked with Word 2007 and may work.

Alternately you could check the web sites of Nitro PDF Professional and Nuance PDF Professional to see if they support Word 2010. They did support earlier versions of Word with similar add-in toolbar icons and a variety of settings. They are much cheaper than Acrobat Standard but lack features of Acrobat Professional.

I don’t know why other lines are not printing correctly. You may have a friend with Word 2010 + Acrobat 9 who could test this for you on he Word document before you spend any money.

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I had similar problems and then switched to PDF Converter 7 by Nuance.
The problems disappeared and I find that it works just as well, if not better than Adobe and it’s a lot cheaper.

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Lane

If the links are blue but not actual links then go into Acrobat 7 (Advanced menu?) and select Convert URLs to web links. For it to work you would need to have used http:// or started the URL with www. For emails you would have need to use the protocol mailto: .

I thought Nuance PDF Converter was the less expensive product than Nuance PDF Professional in which case it has far less features than Acrobat Standard. Nuance Professional and Nitro Professional are very close with similar interface structure and the same underlying PDF engine.

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I think you will find it better to print to PDF rather than save as PDF. This will preserve a color image and bypass any mismatch between Office and your PDF generator. Works for me.

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I think you will find it better to print to PDF rather than save as PDF. This will preserve a color image and bypass any mismatch between Office and your PDF generator. Works for me.

Unfortunately any print-to-PDF approach will not retain the link as required by the initial poster.

tfspry said “The “Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard” is an older version of Adobe Reader? The newest version is Adobe Reader X (10.0.1)?”

Acrobat is a paid version for making and modifying PDFs and can create fully interactive multimedia. It has nothing to do with Adobe Reader which is a free reader/viewer/printer for PDFs. Acrobat is also at version 10 and is available as Standard and Professional versions. Nuance and Nitro Professional are competitors to Acrobat Standard but lack features of Acrobat Professional. The latter now stores video as Flash and the Adobe Reader 9 and 10 have the Flash Player built in unlike other products which use Flash as a helper application if present.

to Lane…

If web URLs are in a PDF but not internally converted to actual links they will nevertheless be recognized by the Adobe Reader, subject to that option not being turned off in the Adobe Reader preferences (Ctrl K). Email addresses prefixed with mailto: will also be recognised in the Reader and clicking them will open the default email program.

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PrimoPDF works well for me.

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PrimoPDF works well for me.

I pointed out earlier that a print-to-PDF program like PrimoPDF does not convert convert web URLs to live links in the PDF. The original poster wanted that as well as solving a curious problem. If you are using PrimoPDF I suggest you move to the free Nitro PDF Reader (Creator) from the owners of Primo. Nitro is far superior having quality/size controls, security controls, and can add metadata (title, subject, author). The Nitro people also sell a professional product which is one of the very few programs which does much of what Acrobat does. Nuance is similar.

Merv

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We gave up on Nitro PDF reader (1.x) & Foxit reader (4.x) when we had difficulties in printing several PDFs. Only Acrobat reader would print them correctly.

Joe

--Joe

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Joe

I agree that to print all the diverse varieties of PDFs the Adobe Reader is by far the best and I use it myself. Primo was mentioned for creating’ PDFs via print-to-PDF, NOT for printing PDFs. I simply made the point that I consider Nitro Reader better than Primo for creating PDFs.

Adobe Reader does NOT create PDFs. It is for viewing and printing. Adobe renamed “Acrobat Reader” to Adobe Reader since about version 6 to avoid confusion with Acrobat itself. Since 2008 PDF has belonged to ISO not Adobe.

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This is a Microsoft product problem…I believe it stems from the track changes feature mostly and also from the formatting funtions. I have this problem OFTEN and the only way to deal with it when it happens is to treat that particular word document as if it has a cold…you don’t let it touch anything else. You don’t move that formatting to another word document or that new word doc will also have the same problems failing to print or make a pdf with any text on it. I write press releases for an organization that produces several documents across many content providers and when all of the work is done I have to copy and paste the entire selection into a new word doc then click “text only” in the paste option field in the lower right corner of the pasted selection so that the paste action does not transfer any other hidden commands to the new windows document. Then I have to go through the new document with the old one next to it and reformat the new one so that it looks like the old one…but I cannot copy ANYTHING from the old document as far as formatting or it could transfer the corruption to the new document, and you will again be able to print nothing but blanks with a few underlines and the occasional image when printing or making a PDF…sorry but Microsoft strikes again…they invent 100,000 features but fail at the basic one of “PRINTING”…if a word processing program does ANYTHING right it should be printing…please Microsoft try harder… you are really messing with my personal time and productivity…why is it that Adobe does EVERYTHING better than you? They are so much smaller. Your office application completely fails to render HTML in the W3 standard ways, your word HTML creator produces nothing but jibberish. Your publisher program is quite a bit distant to adobe InDesign, your Internet Explorer programs are a complete joke…not to mention your long list of difficult to use mobile phones…and windows never ever seems to get easier to use regardless of the version…There have been virtually 0 user improvements in windows in the past decade despite 2000, ME, Vista, 7, 8. Your the biggest provider out there surely YOU could afford to hire someone creative enough to make an intuitive program launcher, and enough testers to get basic buggs fixed.

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Your Adobe Standard comes with a PDF printer…
How about reinstalling it?

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Hi Lane,

I imagine you have an answer by now from one of the above. Just thought I’d mention that I’ve found Acrobat Standard 9 to be much faster and reliable than 7 or 8. A good reason to upgrade. As suggested by others, check your print settings for conversion of hyperlinks.

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Am I doing something wrong? Why do I get the blue text sometimes when I pdf and not others? I have asked our IT person to come and have a look and he too is mystified. Is this a well known fault?

I have Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard installed on my machine. Does this make any difference? Should I upgrade?

Any advice would be much appreciated

I have had this same issue and we Found A Solution

Save the file to a .DOC – (word 97-2003) and reopen the file – then save it to a PDF or print to PDF or whatever – the issue appears to be specifically a .docx issue vs .doc

Issue was resolved for us.

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