Saving as a PDF “shrinks” Word document

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I created a brochure in Word 2007. When I convert it to pdf it gets reduced by about 7%. Is this normal, and is there a way to avoid this?

Thanks

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BTW when I say it shrinks it, I am referring to the size of the fonts, paragraphs, graphics, etc.

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OK I see that in the print dialog (I am using Foxit Reader, not sure if that makes a difference) there is an option called Page Scaling. It was defaulting to Fit To Paper. When I change it to Actual Size, then the shrinking goes away.

But now I see it is shifting the image up about 1/4 inch on the page.

I’ll install Adobe Reader, see if that makes a difference.

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When I print it with Adobe Reader, it has the same 1/4 inch shift up of the contents of the document. I guess it was Word that did this when it created the pdf. I’d hate to have to reformat this whole brochure, it has about 3 or 4 dozen objects of different types on it.

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Do you have a very small top margin on your document? Unless it is smaller than the minimum margin for your regular printer, you should get an almost identical result between your regular printer and your PDF. Hmmm…

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Are you sure the shift is part of the PDF file as displayed on screen? This is most likely due to the page scaling on output but to be sure you need to check the file in the Acrobat viewing program before you print it.

Could it be that your printer is not using the same paper size that was requested in Word?

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The problem is definitely in the pdf file conversion.

As a test, I did tell Word to reset all the margins back to the standard setting, still had this issue.

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I decided to run a test with a file that I create from scratch. After the conversion to pdf, it prints almost exactly the same (it shifts the image down a little more than a 1/16th of inch, and to the side about a 1/16th – not an exact copy, but acceptable).

So I decided to go back to my brochure file and see what is different. I set the margins to 1 inch, I deleted most of my text boxes, moved the rest of the text boxes in toward the center so they are nowhere near the edge. Converted to pdf and printed, it still has the shift down of about 1/4 inch.

Since the brochure is in landscape mode and my test doc is in portrait mode, I changed the test doc to landscape mode, converted to pdf, and printed. The test doc still prints fine.

Not sure what to think. This brochure was created based on a template from Microsoft, maybe there is some odd setting in it.

Vince

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Here is the original template from MIcrosoft, with no changes by me.

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That’s odd, I attached it but I do not see it shown.

Here is a link to it instead:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC103817561033.aspx?CategoryID=CT101043031033

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I used that template to open a new document and added four small boxes in the corners of the page and then Saved As a PDF. The resultant file shows the elements in the corners as I expected. Have you done that?

What are you using to create the PDF?

I don’t know what else to suggest for you.

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Andrew,

Is your printed page from the pdf aligned exactly like the printed page from the Word doc?

And you say you added four small boxes. Why did you need to do that? Did the template not have content when you downloaded it?
Does that original content print in the exact same place on the page when you print the pdf as it does when you print the Word doc?

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Vincenzo

The PDF onscreen is exactly the same as the Word document. I didn’t bother printing it out because you said earlier “The problem is definitely in the pdf file conversion”

I put boxes in each corner because I wanted to see visually on screen whether anything was chopped off without having to measure the distance from the page edge to the text elements and then compare that with the Word document.

Making the PDF print in exactly the same place is as shown on screen is a separate issue. The most common issue here is the page scaling but there is also a setting for autocentering the graphic that might be a factor.

Now it is also possible that your printer is not super accurate with where it puts the image on the page. All printers pick up the paper and pull it into the position for printing with physical rollers. Sometimes the paper slips a little or the printer is naturally offset a little. This is the primary reason that the printer can’t print right to the edge of the paper – the manufacturer gives themselves a margin for error to ensure that they never put ink/toner anywhere other than on the page.

If you have checked everything else and the PDF is appearing correct on screen then you have a few options remaining.
1. Try different printers to see if you can find one that is more accurate
2. Move the content on the page in the opposite direction to counteract the offset introduced by your printer
3. Trim the paper with a guillotine after you have printed – this is how commercial printers print full bleed output. You will end up with a smaller piece of paper using this method.

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I checked all the settings you suggested, could not fix the issue. One setting I could not change was Auto-Rotate and Center. When I changed that, it rotated the doc back to Portrait mode. So I can not say if the center function was the culprit. Anyway, I ran out of time and had to just re-format the document to adjust for the shift when the pdf was created.

I still need to find the issue so the next time I do a similar task I do not have to format twice. I am wondering if it has to do with my printer driver and how Word vs Adobe reader interacts with it. I guess I will try printing on a different computer.

OK Thanks for the help.

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The answer is to buy decent .pdf creation software as MSWord is notoriously poor at creating .pdf files not to mention the huge file sizes it produces – if you don’t want to buy Acrobat professional to create the .pdf properly I would suggest you try the new Nuance PDF reader (FREE!!) http://www.nuance.co.uk/imaging/products/pdf-reader.asp which is a much smaller and neater download than Acrobat Reader

Another excellent alternative to MSWord is to download and install Sun Systems ‘Open Office Suite (FREE!!) a fully featured office package compatible with MSWord that has an inbuilt .pdf creator – http://www.openoffice.org/ – why pay for MSWord when you don’t have to?

In the UK a large power company recently send a 1.8Mb .pdf flyer created in MSWord to over 100,000 shareholders attached to their 1st quarter 2010 share statements – I ran it through Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended ‘Reduce file size’ and the file was reduced to 748Kb with NO discernable difference

Moral – Don’t use MSWord – use proper software!

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Maybe you or your company should bite the bullet and buy Acrobat 9 Standard or Professional. I (as an individual) use it several times per day for creating, merging, editing and resizing pdfs, and find it well worth the money. Presume it would solve the problem, though have never got a ruler out to measure the margins.

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I remain unconvinced that buying Acrobat Pro would solve Vincenzo’s problem and note that at no stage has he said which PDF creation tool he is using. He was able to create a document which didn’t move when printed so potentially there is something special about the particular document he was working with. Perhaps the paper size and page layout don’t match – he used an A4 template and may be printing onto US Letter for all we know.

Although using Acrobat 9 to compress an existing Acrobat file can work sometimes quite dramatically as Paul has noted, I have seen the same thing happen with Acrobat files that were created with Acrobat – it just depends on the settings you are using in the PDF Optimizer. If you choose to downsample images and not embed fonts then substantial filesize savings can be made easily without making any visible difference on screen but the print quality may suffer especially on a machine which doesn’t have the fonts already installed. Acrobat 9 has a great PDF Optimizer dialog now which reveals a lot of information about the elements responsible for the file size but it doesn’t do anything to help Vincenzo’s problem.

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I originally used Word 2007 to create the pdf file.

I also have PDF Converter Pro, a $100 program by Nuance. I used that to convert the file and it also was reduced in overall size on the printed page.

Andrew,
you said I was using an A4 formatted document. Where do I find that information? And I was printing it to letter size paper.
But as a test I created a simple Word doc from scratch and converted it to pdf, and it also had the same reduction in printed size. But I guess I should check to see that it was not also A4.

I also took that test Word doc and the pdf to another computer and printed to its printer, it still showed the same reduction.

Thanks

Vince

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The link you posted was to an A4 template “Real estate agent brochure (tri-fold, A4)”. There is a variant which is setup for US Letter which in hindsight you should have used Real estate agent brochure (tri-fold). The US Letter paper size is shorter and fatter than A4 so this would certainly result in an offset when printing.

You should always set the page setup in Word to match the paper you are printing on. Do this in Word 2007 by going to the Page Layout ribbon and clicking on the Size button.

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Thanks for the info about checking document size, Andrew.

But when I look at the size of my brochure, it is Letter size. When I copied the link from the Microsoft page to post in this thread, I must have picked the wrong one. But my original download was the correct Letter size.

Vince

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This certainly sounds like a paper size disparity. I use the Bullzip PDF Printer to convert A4 Word documents to PDF, and the paper size always defaults to Letter. I have to go into Properties/Advanced to reset it each time. (Other software, e.g. PDF995, does the same thing.) Does anyone know how to change this setting permanently?

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