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I'm writing a thesis in Word 2016, and it is about 68 pages now with 23xxx words. The file is in Strict Office OpenXML format, for maximum stability. But whenever I try to save the file as a PDF through Word, it ends up broken in some places. Heading might be missing, some text might be misaligned... I don't know what the problem is. Should I use something else to save into a PDF file? I tried the two PDF formats offered by Word, and they both come out broken, many times in completely random places. :/

 

Anyone has a similar issue?

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The preview of Office 2016 for Windows.

 

The preview of Office 2016 for Windows.

Likely the PDFs appear "broken" due to their being created in an image-focussed program (such as Adobe Illustrator) - I don't have this issue with PDFs I've created myself in any version of Word (which has had the feature since 2010).  I've even back-checked using Reader DC (the successor to Adobe Reader) and PDFs creatd in different programs CAN be different even in Reader DC - Reader DC can tell them apart; however, Word cannot.

Likely the PDFs appear "broken" due to their being created in an image-focussed program (such as Adobe Illustrator) - I don't have this issue with PDFs I've created myself in any version of Word (which has had the feature since 2010).  I've even back-checked using Reader DC (the successor to Adobe Reader) and PDFs creatd in different programs CAN be different even in Reader DC - Reader DC can tell them apart; however, Word cannot.

 

I'm just doing the Save As - PDF in Word. Nothing else. No pictures, no anything. Just pure text.

I'm just doing the Save As - PDF in Word. Nothing else. No pictures, no anything. Just pure text.

Do you have Reader DC?

 

Compare PDFs created in Word 2016 to Word 2013-sourced PDFs; there may actually BE a difference in the PDF creation engine used.

I haven't seen a similar issue so far. However, recently I had to prepare a 200-something page document for printing and preferred the output to be a PDF.

 

I had to use a PDF printer (Bullzip) to do the export, since it allows some control over image compression (Word's PDF export applies unacceptably lossy compression to my images). Maybe using a PDF printer rather than the baked-in Export feature will be sufficient to solve your formatting issue (though of course it doesn't fix that Word is doing this in the first place).

I haven't seen a similar issue so far. However, recently I had to prepare a 200-something page document for printing and preferred the output to be a PDF.

 

I had to use a PDF printer (Bullzip) to do the export, since it allows some control over image compression (Word's PDF export applies unacceptably lossy compression to my images). Maybe using a PDF printer rather than the baked-in Export feature will be sufficient to solve your formatting issue (though of course it doesn't fix that Word is doing this in the first place).

 

Tried the built-in PDF printer in Windows 10, still the same thing happens. I will try some alternatives like NitroPDF and whatever else I can find.

 

It is not so much of a problem, but it is a master thesis after all, and I rather share a PDF file than a Word file.

 

EDIT: I'll check out that Bullzip thing. Thanks.

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