Save as PDF vs Print to PDF - Quality issues

Question

I'm having some trouble with the graphics in my word documents when I convert them to PDF. I have been using the same process for over 10 years and it has worked fine, but I have recently upgraded my computer and my Adobe software (now using a Creative Cloud subscription) but my Office software has stayed the same (Office 2007).

I produce most of my documents in Word, they are mostly text based, but have a lot of line art diagrams as well. I draw my diagrams in Illustrator then Copy from Illustrator, paste special as 'picture (enhanced metafile)' in word. This produces the best results by far. I've done testing numerous times with pasting as bitmap etc and the results are poor in comparison. I know I can export the Illustrator file to another format (jpg or png etc) and then insert that file as a picture into Word, but I have hundreds of diagrams, and would rather not have 2 files for every diagram.

The copy/paste special (enhanced metafile) process has worked fine until my computer upgrade.

Now if I 'save as PDF' from the Word doc, the top and left hand side of my diagram gets slightly shaved off (see 'save as PDF' image)

If I print to PDF, it works fine (see 'print to PDF' image)

The problem is, I have Table of Contents links and hyperlinks throughout the docs which need to be live in the PDF, and they only work if I use the 'Save as PDF' method.

I've checked the Adobe PDF driver settings for both the 'save as' and 'print' options and they are exactly the same.

Does anyone know why this is happening, and/or how to fix it? At the moment, my only work around has been to open up each Illustrator file again (which is a real pain and time consuming when they don't really need editing) and put a white border around them, then once it is pasted into Word and PDFed it's the white border that gets shaved off not the diagram edges.

Thanks for any advice/help you can offer!

Answer 1

Since you have Adobe Acrobat, you should also have PDFMaker installed. PDFMaker is accessed from buttons on your Word toolbar instead of File>Print. PDFs saved with PDFMaker retain hyperlinks and TOC links and it should give you the same quality your get from the PDF print driver. If you have any issues, here is an Adobe help page on ensuring that Word creates hyperlinks: Ensuring that Word TOCs create Hyperlinks in Acrobat

Answer 2

Thanks Doug,

Yes I am using the Word save as PDF facility (as in office icon, save as, adobe PDF), and the same result also comes from going through the acrobat tab, create PDF.

I can't understand why the results are different between 'save as' and 'print to' PDF when the PDF conversion settings are exactly the same for both methods!!

Thanks for the suggestion though!

Answer 3

Is the Save As being done using an Adobe utility or using the Word save as PDF facility?  If not the latter, try using it.