COMPLAINT! Word 2010 & Acrobat X (links, bookmarks, MEGA-fail!)

[superboyac]

Maybe I haven't found the solution, but using Acrobat X PDFMaker to convert a Word 2010 document does NOT convert the table of contents to clickable objects in the pdf, other links fail big time.  Furthermore, it completely jacks up my custom styles.  When I print, my custom styles become mirror-flipped and tiny off in the corner somewhere.  This is awful.  I've been working on a big manual for work the past 18 months, and now I can't print them anymore through Word 2010 and any pdf printer, including Acrobat X, in a way that preserves links.

I've googled this for the past two days, and it seems to be a common problem with Office 2010 and Acrobat.  I don't know who is to blame, but there is no solution.  This is crazy.  This is big bucks software.  Do you know what this means?  If Acrobat Pro X can't do this, that means people have spend hundreds of dollars for something that can do nothing more than a free pdf printer can do (like PDF Creator).  I can't believe this, this is outrageous.

What am I going to have to do?  Go back to Office 2007 and Acrobat 9?  It was such a pain to get IT to install and upgrade all this s---!  I'm telling you, every day that goes by, I'm getting more and more pissed off at these huge companies that collect money like vacuum and fail to offer anything in return.  I'm trying not to be a Occupy Wall Street nut, but it's becoming hard.

[40hz]

Try doing a "save as" with a different name and create the PDF from that. Sometimes there's a glitch with undo or meta data in the original doc that screws up Acrobat. Ran into that a few times.  Haven't seen this specifically in Word 2010 - but it's a quick & easy thing to try.

Luck!

[superboyac]

Try doing a "save as" with a different name and create the PDF from that. Sometimes there's a glitch with undo or meta data in the original doc that screws up Acrobat. Ran into that a few times.  Haven't seen this specifically in Word 2010 - but it's a quick & easy thing to try.

Luck!

-40hz (November 15, 2011, 07:08 PM)

Thanks I'll try that, but I think I may have already done that.  I even tried copy/pasting the content into a new blank document.  I was on the phone with the Acrobat support guy for a little bit today.  He is going to elevate the problem to someone else.  Ha.  I really think this is poor software design by either Adobe or Microsoft or both.  This complaint is all over the web, and this is a very basic functionality of the software.  It really is hard on me to think about how much money these softwares bring in, and how bloated and unimpressive the development has been over the past decade.

I have a feeling, from what I saw today, that the problem may be the styles that I use (which shouldn't be a problem, in my opinion).  I started heavily using styles last year, which I love, but they were made in 2007 using old 2003 or before techniques (good advice I read on the web).  Since then, MS has added a lot of styling features to their program, but most experts say to stay away from all that and use the old school techniques because they tend to corrupt the documents.  But I need this automation, I need the TOC links, I need to use styles...so I may change my styles to use the more updated features.  It's frustrating, I must have spent two weeks perfecting the styles to look just the way I wanted.  But I may only have to mess with the headers.

[Stoic Joker]

I have a client that was having difficulties with large (50+ pages - lots of pictures etc.) Word document reports. While researching why they kept "exploding" after a (seemingly) random amount of time, I ran across the formatting as a cause theory also. The difference was in that what I found was not so much stressing the old vs. new ... as it was consistency.

The client standardized the version of Office used, and the staff got together and agreed on what formatting was to be used for various things/sections of the reports. Since then they haven't had a Word doc go pop in over 2 years.

Have, or can you break the document down into sections to see which parts are most likely to piss-off Acrobat?

[superboyac]

I've discovered what the problem was, and it was the styles as I suspected.  I redid a couple of my header styles and now everything is working.  Still, this all worked with the Office 2007/Acrobat 9 combo perfectly, there shouldn't be a difference with the upgrades.  But the problem is solved.

Actually, one more thing.  I replaced my table of contents that I had generated using the old style way (Office 2003 techniques).  I made a new one using Word 2010's TOC button and customized it slightly, and that mechanism is working now.

I'm starting to think that I don't have to be paranoid about using the more automated and fancy features of Word.  The wisdom from all the experts is to not use any of the fancy features as they will corrupt the document.  But all that advice on the web is usually coming from several years ago, and I'm not seeing much advice about current version.  I'm going to trust the new version until I have evidence that it's not working.

[Stoic Joker]

I'm going to trust the new version until I have evidence that it's not working.

-superboyac (November 17, 2011, 03:56 PM)

The .docx files piss me off too, but I have been warming to them a bit as of late. I think the key is in moderation; be only as fancy as is necessary.

[superboyac]

I'm going to trust the new version until I have evidence that it's not working.

-superboyac (November 17, 2011, 03:56 PM)

The .docx files piss me off too, but I have been warming to them a bit as of late. I think the key is in moderation; be only as fancy as is necessary.

-Stoic Joker (November 17, 2011, 04:51 PM)

That seems to be the wisest choice.  Actually, now that you mention it, I remember the Acrobat tech support guy changed my docx to the older doc file, and it worked fine when he did that.  But I wanted to keep it in the docx format.  And I also wanted to know what was causing the problem.