Creating print quality pdf from Word

J

Jayeff

New Member
I've been tasked recently with creating print quality pdf from Word documents. I know where I am with Quark (more or less) but I'm a little confused with how to do it with Word.

I'm a fairly small operator that mainly produces for a small press publisher with some small freelance work on the side. Budget restraints are considerable, so I only have the 2016 Home & Student edition of Word. (My version of Quark is somewhat prehistoric in case anyone wondered!)

As far as I can tell I need to do the following:

In Advanced Options select 'Do not compress images in file'
Set default to High Fidelity (possibly not needed with do not compress enabled)

Export rather than print

Optimise at 'Standard (publishing online and printing)'

In options:
PDF/A compliant enabled
Optimize for image quality disabled?

and that's it? or are there other options to adjust?

any help and advice greatly appreciated

thanks
 
I wouldn't personally use the export to pdf from MS office, it's not really that good from a standards point of view in my experience.

I'm guessing the pdf's are primarily text based seeing as they're coming from word but personally I'd be using print to pdf and using the options to set how I want it, that's how I've done it in the past anyway.

If you don't ave access to acrobat, cutepdf (free) has been pretty reliable as a fall back in my experience.
 
We have had author created pdfs supplied to use before and managed to get a print quality product at the end of it. So I know it CAN be done. (I can ask the last person but wanted to ask people who 100% know their stuff rather than someone who possibly just went with default options.)

These contain a lot of line art images and they arranged as a sort of flow chart format. (It's a history of army cap badges, riveting stuff). It would take far too long to recreate in a proper application like Quark. And really not worth it when we only plan to do about 20 copies.

We are doing it through a print on demand outfit and theyre not particularly helpful so I'm on my own figuring out how to do it. Because of the costs involved, even to get a proof copy before printing, means I have to get this right first time. Trial and error isnt an option.
 
I'm not sure how any pdf creator software, like the full acrobat or cutepdf would help me here as the files the author supplied are Word.

(Just to clarify in the reply above when I say 'we have had author created pdfs supplied to us' I am referring to pdfs that were created with Word.)
 
No compression
Colour profiles as are - PDF X4 if you can

Send it directly to the printer in the highest quality possible - do not convert colours or anything yourself

The printers will work it through their RIP.

Line Art images will possibly be really bad. You're better off swapping these out for the vector versions or high res (1200ppi) versions of the image in Acrobat.

There really isn't much else you can do.
 
Thanks. Unfortuantely this is a print on demand company who dont seem to do the rip process, or its automated, or something. Its a weird setup and not like a regualr printer. I hate working with them tbh I know where I am with a regualr print outfit. Totaly lost with these people. But theyre cheap and they can do low quantity runs.

No colour and these are vector rather than halftone images. I mean tbf I have sent a pdf with colour (photos) to these people before and theyve reproduced adequately. However I didnt make that pdf, it was supplied to me.

Theres no option with this to use something else or do something different with this. What I have is a very intricately laid out Word ocument with a lot of images throughout. Either I find a way to make something usable with the settings I am playing with in my original post or we dont produce any book at all.
 
To clarify when I said 'I mean tbf I have sent a pdf with colour (photos) to these people before and theyve reproduced adequately. However I didnt make that pdf, it was supplied to me.' It was a pdf created from Word that was supplied to me.

I know how to assemble a publication in Quark and make a print quality pdf from it. This thing, that should be simle to resolve is tying m in knots however.
 
Sorry, you did actualy answer my question. The other info kind of threw me. Like I say, this is basic as, there's no options for those types of adjustment with thi sjob.
 
Your first post came across as though you had received word documents that needed to be converted to pdf.... hence my reply.
 
Jayeff said:
I'm not sure how any pdf creator software, like the full acrobat or cutepdf would help me here as the files the author supplied are Word.

(Just to clarify in the reply above when I say 'we have had author created pdfs supplied to us' I am referring to pdfs that were created with Word.)
Click to expand...
Acrobat installs an icon in MS Word for converting.

Get the Adobe Acrobat tab to appear - Microsoft Support

Get the Adobe Acrobat tab to appear in Office programs.
support.microsoft.com support.microsoft.com
www.adobe.com

Documents to PDF, DOCX & DOC to PDF | Adobe Acrobat

Explore the document to PDF conversion feature in Adobe Acrobat and see how easy it is to convert documents like DOC and DOCX to PDF. Try it for free!
www.adobe.com
 
Not really sure what can be done.

It is what it is. In my experience with different fonts/margins/setups in Word it's best for the originator of the file to create the PDF.

One reason we don't convert PDFs from Word is that too many things can shift.

The client supplies the PDF. And if it's from Word it is what it is - Garbage in Garbage out (GIGO)

If they want better quality they need to pay to have it recreated in a professional layout application - not a word processing application.
 
I have had a similar issue. You may just be suffering from the fact that your version of Word is not the same as your client. You mentioned you have a 2016 version and the word pdf's you have gotten may have been created with a newer version. Even the online free version acts differently sometimes. Always best to double check with the client and verify your are both using the same version and operating system.
 
Being months ago I assume this resolved itself.

The only successful way I've found to convert from word to PDF is building a template in Word that's specially designed to be converted to PDF.

It's not something that can be done quickly and you'll probably have to reduce the complexity of the template. Change the design.

I wouldn't do it for a one off document unless I was being well paid to do so. When I was doing it, it was part of production line/workflow where documents were produced daily for years. Financial Reports etc.
 
GrowlerG said:
building a template in Word that's specially designed to be converted to PDF.
Click to expand...
That doesn't make sense - a PDF would be just exactly what is in the Word File in the exact same layout.
PDF is not special - it's just a different file format that can be read by many different viewers and readers.
 
Not all the formatting elements in Word will convert cleanly or at all to adobe PDF. So you need to avoid or simplify those elements to have a cleaner conversion.

I'm assuming you want to convert the MS Word doc/pdf to one adobe can take in cleanly for printing.

If you are going to print directly from the Word Doc or Word PDF then I'm not sure whats the issue. The op didn't actually mention any specific problems. Other than what's the best settings.
 
I resolved the issue. A contact of a print 'broker' we often use explained a couple of simple steps, basicaly just adjustments to the output settings, that made a print quality pdf. The responses here were generaly a bit overthought tbh. There's literaly two options in the output for either print quality or screen quality. Then two additional settings in the print quality for high res and embedding the fonts. That's all it needed and the printer accepted the file which came out exactly as intended. Admittedly it's a POD digital process rather than offset litho process. Maybe that wouldnt have been so easy.
 
I'm stating that from memory by the way, I might have said what I needed to do specificaly slightly wrong, but it was literally two checkboxes in the print options.
 
GrowlerG said:
Not all the formatting elements in Word will convert cleanly or at all to adobe PDF. So you need to avoid or simplify those elements to have a cleaner conversion.

I'm assuming you want to convert the MS Word doc/pdf to one adobe can take in cleanly for printing.

If you are going to print directly from the Word Doc or Word PDF then I'm not sure whats the issue. The op didn't actually mention any specific problems. Other than what's the best settings.
Click to expand...
You are talking nonsense. There's no difference.
The only issue I have found is that the person who created the Word file is best positioned to make the PDF due to font conflict and text reflow.

I'd never convert another persons Word file to PDF - instead I'd ask them to convert to a PDF from their own system.


GrowlerG said:
I'm assuming you want to convert the MS Word doc/pdf to one adobe can take in cleanly for printing.
Click to expand...
What are you talking about?
 
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