Error in Table of Contents

[mwilson12000]

Just as I am in the process of finalizing a document for printing, a really nasty problem has started. There is an automatically-generated Table of Contents in Microsoft Word. For some reason, Acrobat is starting to change some of the page numbers in the Table of Contents! The Word TOC has the correct page numbers, and the sections start on those pages in the PDF as well, but the PDF TOC is incorrect. The problem starts with Chapter 7. Its page number is listed as 178 instead of 177, and every section after that is also one page too high.  I have tried updating fields in Word -- but that doesn't change anything because it's already correct in Word.  I have tried Repair Installation in Acrobat, but no change. I am using the PDFMaker plugin with Microsoft Word, but the same problem occurs if I use the built-in save-as-PDF option in Word, which is really strange. I have Acrobat Standard DC and Word 2016.  Windows 10, 64 bit. A really awful thought -- what if some of the other automatically-generated fields, like reference numbers or footnote numbers are also being messed up?!

[mwilson12000]

By the way, the document also has a List of Maps and a List of Photographs, and the page numbers in those lists are also off by one for every page after p. 177.  I did some spot checks and did not see any problems with footnote numbers or reference numbers, but there are a few page references in the text and those are off, too, with the same pattern (low pages numbers correct, high page numbers off by one).

[Test Screen Name · Accepted solution]

Since this happens also if you use Save as PDF, it shows that Word is messing up rather than Acrobat. It isn’t a good thing but it’s important to know what is failing. Repairing Acrobat can’t fix a Word problem.

[mwilson12000]

Good point. I have now checked that if I print the TOC from Word, the printed page has the wrong page numbers. My problem is not solved, but it does seem that Acrobat is off the hook for the problem.  Thanks!

[mwilson12000]

In case anyone is interested, I tried repairing the installation of Word, but that did not help.  However, by making minor changes to p. 176 of my document I was able to get it to print and PDF properly.

[DocPan]

I had this same problem, and mwilson12000's solution did not fix it for me. I fixed my issue by saving the docx as a doc, deleting and recreating the TOC, and then saving it again as a docx. Comparing the new docx with the original (broken) docx, what appears to have only changed are the TOC (which is understandable, because I recreated it) and all of the text boxes. I suspect that one or more of the text boxes was breaking the docx in a hidden way.