As part of my workflow, I have to convert large reports compiled in MS Word over to PDF. These reports have table of contents, plates, tables, etc. I have found that for some reports, when converting them, the formatting changes slightly and this can cause text to overflow onto new pages that were not in the word document. Occassionally, if there was a page break included after the text, or a full page image or table, this can cause massive whitespaces which were not included in the original document, and are not something we'd like to include in the final report.
I am on PC and have tried every method of converting to pdf that I can think of. A couple of them do not alter the pdf, but also do not maintain links for the table of contents and plates/figures, or create a major dip in the formatting/image quality. I realize some of these are Word based functions and not something that Adobe can alter on their end, but I'm hoping you might have some advice, or a means through Adobe to fix the issue. As a note, I cannot share a report to view as they are confidential but we are using Calibri text and headings and the font type is not changed during the pdfing process.
Here are the methods I've attempted and their results:
Create PDF (from the Acrobat ribbon in word) - adds extra formatting (shifted text and whitespace)
Convert PDF (from Adobe) - adds extra formatting (shifted text and extra whitespace)
Print to PDF (in word) - results in the correct formatting, but removes all links
Save As >> PDF (in word) - Choosing Optimize for "Standard (publishing online and printing)" this worked, but there is a major decline in quality.
Save as Adobe PDF (in word) - works if you uncheck the setting "Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF" - this is the ONLY method that maintained the formatting and the links.
Export >> Create PDF - adds extra formatting (shifted text and extra whitespace) - would probably work if I disabled accessibility & reflow but I haven't explicitly tried this.
As you can see, the only method that seems to work is disabling accessibility and reflow. I imagine that something to do with the tagging must be reformatting spacing in some way. We can go without the accessibility but my preference would be to keep it in case there is someone down the line whom it would benefit. If there are other solutions I'd love to hear them. One of my colleagues is a mac user, and was able to get the same effect by choosing Save As >> PDF and choosing "for Print" which is not an option I have on Word for Windows. This maintained a higher level of quality than the option "Standard (publishing online and printing)" that I was able to use, but I have a feeling this may also remove tags/reflow.
Thank you in advance for any advice you can provide!
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