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wendykm
wendykm
Participant
January 11, 2016
Answered

Converting Word doc to PDF - trouble with section breaks

  • January 11, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 20803 views

I have Adobe Acrobat Pro (2015 Continuous release) on my Macbook Pro (OS Yosemite 10.10.5) and I use Word for Mac 2011. I write a lot of lengthy documents and often insert section breaks so I can change the page orientation from portrait to landscape and back, etc.. When I convert Word documents to PDF only part of the document is PDF-ed up until the first page re-orientation.  It drives me crazy because to enable the whole document to be converted I have to break up my word document into separate documents according to portrait or landscape and then convert each to a PDF separately and then combine them at the end.  It causes no end of trouble with page numbers and headers and footers.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Does anyone have a solution?

I would be grateful for any assistance.  I am about to write another very lengthy report that will contain pages of different orientation and I would prefer to be able to PDF it in one go.  Thanks.

Correct answer Meenakshi_Negi

Hi wendym79499885,

In Word, open the file you want to create a PDF of, click File > Print, and select Adobe PDF as your printer.

Click Properties in the Print dialog box and make sure you have the selections you want.

Back on the Print Setup dialog, leave the Paper and Orientation as both Letter and Portrait respectively.

In the Print dialog box, select Print to File and browse to the correct location. Make certain to save this as a PostScript file (name.ps) and at the Safe Book As field, you want Single File selected.

Again on the Print Book dialog, click the checkbox for Generate Adobe Data and click PDF Setup. On the PDF Setup for Selected Files dialog, at the PDF Job Options, select Press Quality or make the appropriate choices for your situation for Settings, Bookmarks, Tags, and Links.

With Adobe Distiller open, File > Open and browse to the .ps file you indicated earlier. Also verify your Default Settings for the PDF are correct. When Distiller is finished, you can double-click the PDF file to open it and check that your portrait and landscape pages show correctly.

Let me know if this works for you.

Regards,

Meenakshi

1 reply

Meenakshi_Negi
Meenakshi_NegiCorrect answer
Legend
January 13, 2016

Hi wendym79499885,

In Word, open the file you want to create a PDF of, click File > Print, and select Adobe PDF as your printer.

Click Properties in the Print dialog box and make sure you have the selections you want.

Back on the Print Setup dialog, leave the Paper and Orientation as both Letter and Portrait respectively.

In the Print dialog box, select Print to File and browse to the correct location. Make certain to save this as a PostScript file (name.ps) and at the Safe Book As field, you want Single File selected.

Again on the Print Book dialog, click the checkbox for Generate Adobe Data and click PDF Setup. On the PDF Setup for Selected Files dialog, at the PDF Job Options, select Press Quality or make the appropriate choices for your situation for Settings, Bookmarks, Tags, and Links.

With Adobe Distiller open, File > Open and browse to the .ps file you indicated earlier. Also verify your Default Settings for the PDF are correct. When Distiller is finished, you can double-click the PDF file to open it and check that your portrait and landscape pages show correctly.

Let me know if this works for you.

Regards,

Meenakshi

wendykm
wendykmAuthor
Participant
January 14, 2016

Hi Meenakshin8396605,

Thanks so much for your answer - it has literally saved me hours!!!! 

Just a few things I need to mention because I wasn't able to follow your answer to the letter and want to be sure that even though the final product looks right it will still be fully functional. 

I didn't have:

  • a Print Dialog box that contained the options you mentioned. 

There was no:

  • Properties to make selections or
  • Print to File although I could save the document as a PostScript file (name.ps). 

I didn't have the option to:

  • Save Book As or
  • to save it as a Single File

There was no option to:

  • click the checkbox for Generate Adobe Data and click PDF Setup.

And on the PDF Setup for Selected Files dialog, at the PDF Job Options, I couldn't:

  • select Press Quality or make the appropriate choices for your situation for Settings, Bookmarks, Tags, and Links.

But from your advice:

I could access the save as a post script in the print menu and so I did.  It produced 6 files from a 60 page document.  and I saved them to my desktop.  I then opened Adobe Acrobat Pro and combined files into one.  Somewhere on the way the Acrobat Distiller did open but I don't know when and I only found it afterwards where I could then see the options you mentioned regrading 'press quality', etc. 

So, is what I have done still a workable solution do you think?  Thanks again, for all your help.

Regards,

wendym79499885,

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