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Peter Jamieson Peter Jamieson is offline
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Default Repost: Help with row shading / PDF output from mail merge (no attachment)

OK, I have now been through a number of tests. Here, I haven't been able to
do anything that creates an obvious difference in the output between a real
printer and the Adobe printer.

Broadly speaking, the main problem I see here is that the grey shading in
the 2nd column containing text "Lg/Lg/33" chops off the bottom of the tail
of the Q above (same for column 4). That problem does not show in Print
Preview on either a "real" printer or the Adobe PDF printer, but it shows
when I actually print, both to the real printer (had to get my magnifying
glass out to check that one) and the Adobe printer.

If I remove the shading, it looks to me as if there is a tiny bit of
truncation of the tail of the Q, but it's less obvious than when the shading
is there.

The only way I can remove the problem altogether is to change the line
spacing to (say) Multiple 1 (which Word treats as "Single") rather than
Multiple 0.9. In fact Multiple 0.95 seems to be OK as well, but that will
probably depend on the actual font metrics of the font you are using and the
extent to which the characters actually used in your lines extend above or
below the line (e.g. in a given font, "Q" and "/" might or might not cause
problems.

However, if I start with your "original" file with the Monospace font, I
have to copy/paste the text into a new document before I can modify it, and
at that point, Word substitutes another fixed-pitch font with rather
different characteristics from the Monospace font (I am assuming that Word
is showing me the Monospace font correctly in the original document). In
this case it is a OpenType font called Consolas (which I suspect comes with
Office 2007 - previously I think Word would probably have used Lucida
Console). Consolas happens to have quite a large tail on the Q which may be
confusing matters.

However, if I try to Acrobat your "original" file (with the Monospace font),
Acrobat cannot embed the font (because although font information is embedded
in the Word document, the font is not actually installed here, and Acrobat
cannot embed it. Of course Acrobat actually needs to embed font information
in order to be able to do what it does). So here, Acrobat substitutes its
Courier Type 1 PS font, and does something weird with the encoding. However,
I assume that on your system, Acrobat embeds the correct font. It may be
worth opening the output .pdf and having a look at File|"Document
properties"|Fonts to see if that is the case. if it isn't perhaps Acrobat is
substituting a font, in which case I would have a look in Word's Adobe PDF
menu, Change conversion settings, Advanced settings, Fonts. If "Embed all
fonts" isn't checked - as I suspect it is by default - maybe it should be.

However, that's about all I can see here, and I'm certainly no expert in
this area.

Peter Jamieson



"Peter Jamieson" wrote in message
...
this is INSANE. sorry, but it's just rubbish isn't it. It's more
secretive than the CIA.


I certainly haven't see a Word "World Fact Book" :-)

I doubt if there is a "proper" way to detect it or remove it - for
example, I don't think you can detect shading in the Find/Replace dialog.
Here I noticed that unchecking Tools|Options|Edit|"Use smart paragraph
selection" means that you can select a paragraph without its mark much
more easily, which in this case means that when you use Format|Borders and
shading, you get to see the Grey-5% rather than the "No fill" you see when
the paragraph mark is selected as well.

But has removing the shading has also solved your "overlap" problem or
not?

Peter Jamieson



"Lee Harris" wrote in message
...

"Lee Harris" wrote in message
...
Further info...

When I used the "Reveal Formatting" option in Word, I can see where the
shading is but not how to remove it

it's under

"Font" there is a shading
Pattern: Clear (Gray ~ 5%)

however, I can't seem to fix this with Format-Font on the selected grey
lines, nor can I click the "shading" link in the reveal formatting list
on the right of the screen and find any way to change it

this is INSANE. sorry, but it's just rubbish isn't it. It's more
secretive than the CIA.


OK, once I'd identified the style type that wasnt shaded I managed to
apply that to all shaded rows to fix it. Right pain in the arse though.
Still have no idea how I got this shading in there, nor how to "properly"
reset/remove it