Word Document Page Breaks Change When Printing

[dhecht]

Here's a strange one....

I created a document (about 200 pages) which was 99% Times New Roman with the rest Arial. I changed the entire document to Courier then re-did some Times New Roman and Arial. The document includes some embedded picture objects (cut and pasted in) as well as page numbers.

When I print, I get a toggle effect on automatic page breaks, and I think manual as well. That is, if I print, the breaks change and it becomes a 186 page document; print again, and it becomes a 205 page document. I can do this consistently all day. It doesn't seem to matter what printer I go to (I have a choice of 5 close by.)

I've tried deleting the manual page breaks, including manual page breaks, deleting the picture objects, deleting the page nubmers. I've been up and down the help text and can't get to what's happening.

What am I missing?

I'm running MS Word 2000 (9.0.3821 SR-5)

Thianks in advance.

 

[derren]

Hi

Does the print preview change as well, or it it just when it prints? Are the breaks that change right at the end of the page? Have you used the paragraph "page break before" setting where you refer to automatic page breaks? Derren
[The only person in the world to like Word]

 

[dhecht]

Hi:

The print preview reflects the pages as seen in print view or normal view.
The breaks occur at various places on the page.
I've used combinations of all the options on the Format -> Paragraph -> line and page breaks including the 'page break before'.

Here's the cycle:

OPEN THE DOCUMENT - SHOWS 185 PAGES
PRINT ONE OR MORE PAGES - DOCUMENT REFORMATED -NOW SHOWS 205 PAGES
(I can watch the page breaks change. Whether I edit before printing doesn't matter)
CLOSE DOCUMENT.
OPEN THE DOCUMENT - SHOWS 185 PAGES
ETC.


Also, I thought my embedded pictures might be having an effect, so I did a fromat -? picture -> layout -> advanced and set pictures to 'tight' with (not that I think it matters) text on both sides.

Thanks.

 

[DaveStL]

Are all 5 of the printers you are trying to print to exactly the same? If not, sometimes it seems Word reformats the document depending on the printer it is going to (don't know whether this has to do with the printer drivers or what). Try this: open your document in print view. Select File, Print, and select your printer. Instead of clicking on OK and printing your document, click on Close. If what I described above is happening, you will see a subtle reformatting of your document. Modify it the way you want, then select File, Print, and select OK (since you already selected the printer previously). At lease that's what we have to do sometimes where I work. We usually don't notice a page count difference in short documents, but in a long document like yours, it could magnify.

 

[derren]

I was just pondering the repagination of your document when DaveStl added his post, and I have to say that I would be very interested to see if this works. It sounds like a splendid way to repaginate the document, and one which I have not yet tried. Derren
[The only person in the world to like Word]

 

[dhecht]

DaveStL:

The printers are all HP, different models. I suppose the drivers are similar. I'd have to find a non-HP around somewhere to see if the problem persists, which would mean the driver is the culprit.

The process you describe does work; however, if I do a File, Print, OK, the effect is the same. Doing the File, Print, Close just breaks the repagination (what appears to me as being modifications to automatic page breaks) into a separate step. Like derren said, it's another way to repaginate (I'm not sure what the 'native' way to repaginate is. At one point, I thought maybe there's a way to tell WORD not to repaginate at all, but I could not find this function in the pull downs.)

It may be true that I have never seen this before so assummed it was a problem. I have printed large documents in the past but always Times New Roman, never Courier and maybe 'large' means number of bytes (number of bytes per page), not number of pages and since this document was once all Times New Roman and printed fine, and the problem only started occuring when I changed to Courier, may the Courier font uses more bits per character.

Maybe the driver is breaking up the document into chunks its memory can handle. Some hard-coded threshold.

If this is 'normal', I can accept it, altough it appears 'a bit squirrely'. Passing this document on to someone else and telling them that when they print all the formatting (page breaks, line breaks, paragraphs) will look good, but when they first open the document, it'll look terrible is not the best situation. But if that's how it works, well, that's how it works. I just needed to elimate the idea that my document was 'hosed' and needed to be fixed.

Thanks for the input. Much appreciated.