Page (not table!) borders disappear when exporting to pdf (Word for Mac)

Hi Jeremy,

I understand you are using the save as option to save the document to PDF and the border disappears in the converted PDF.

May I know if changing the size of the paper makes the border appear in the resulted PDF? Just for the test purpose please use Print option to convert doc to PDF, check whether border appears or not.  This is just to confirm if border is invisible when printing to PDF or only the Save as option causes this issue.

Besides, please check if your Office apps are fully updated. The latest version of Microsoft 365/2019 for mac is 16.50 (21061301). To check the version, open any Office app such as Word, go to the Word menu and choose About Word.

If the version appears lower, then manually update Office apps, click Help > Check for Updates from any of the Office apps to get the latest build.

If the issue persists, please provide the following information:

1. Please confirm the version and build of Word for Mac. To get this information, open Word, go to the Word menu, and choose About Word.
2. Open file in Preview app and convert it to PDF, check if it shows the same result.
3. May I know if adding border to another document and converting it to PDF have similar behavior?

Regards,

Neha

Neha,

Unfortunately, you only get the two options you refer to in the Save As method, not from the Print menu. When using the print menu, at the bottom, the drop down menu allows you to select the pdf option (not the 'Adobe pdf', which isn't the same...). Once selected, there are not those two options to choose from when saving the pdf. (As opposed to the choice appearing when you use the Save As menu...) I'll put some images below showing what I mean.

Hopefully that helps further clarify the difficulty and the difference between the two methods for creating pdfs. Thanks again for your help and thanks in advance for any further ideas!!

Hi Jeremy,

When saving document to PDF using Print option, we get two settings i.e., Best for electronic distribution and accessibility (uses Microsoft online service) and Best for printing. In many cases, some customers confirmed using Best for electronic distribution and accessibility option does retain hyperlinks in the document.

If you tried Best for printing option before to save Word as PDF, this time try using Best for electronic distribution…. see if it shows the border and still retain the hyperlink.

Regarding “PDF created from Save as” option, could you please try changing margins in your document? Changing margin should also change the border and then try saving the doc to PDF, see if this shows any difference.

Regards,

Neha

Neha,

Thank you for the response.

Here's an update:

1. As you suggested, I checked the version of Word, etc. first and it is updated to the most current version (16.5)
2. Using Preview to look at the file was no different than using Adobe to look at it so no progress there.
3. I then tried the pdf option in the print menu (instead of "save as") and the border did appear BUT doing it this way means that all my hyperlinks from the document are lost! So, it looks like something with the "save as" route is causing the border to disappear, but will retain my hyperlinks, but if I want the border to appear, I have to use the print menu to create the pdf...which will remove my links (doubling the work since I have to go through the pdf and put them back in.)

(I know it might seem trivial to some, but these documents are boilerplate language that get included in many other things so putting back in the same hyperlinks over and over builds up over time!)

Hope this helps and thanks in advance for any additional insight!