unprintable white space on a page

[stuck]

This post is for info. only...

I know and understand that different printers have different amounts around the edges of a page that they can't print on. Thus a document that is formatted such that it prints out on, say 62 pages, on one printer could require as many as 70 pages on another, especially if a large number of the pages in the document contain tables and page breaks have been carefully set to avoid splitting tables over two pages.

What I've discovered today is that the amount of usable page area also varies between versions of Word.

Our office is edging towards Word 2007 but 99.9% of our stuff is Word 2000. today a document written in Word 2007 (.doc compatibility mode) when printed on one of our network printers required (yes, you've guessed it) 62 pages. The same doc on the same PC set to use the same network printer when opened in Word 2000 required 70 pages.

It was possible to remove the 'extra' pages easily enough, by reducing the point spacing after each paragraph and then both in Word 2007 & Word 2000 the doc was 62 pages.

I just thought other might like to hear of this 'issue'.

Ken

[IanWilson]

Is that all there is to it, or is there an issue with some settings in Word 2007? I seem to remember, for instance, that Word 2000 didn't have the option that later versions have had about whether space before a para is added to space after the previous one, or whether the space between them is the greater of those two amounts rather than the sum of them. (In Word 2003 that is controlled by an option obscurely described as "Don't use HTML paragraph auto spacing".)

Also what about other settings in the compatibility options like "Don't add extra space for raised/lowered characters" or "suppress extra line spacing at top of page" (or at bottom of page). Is the issue affected by how these various options are set on either or both of the installations of Word?

Ian

[stuck]

dunno. I'll have another look at the paragraph space before & after settings in each version of Word. Our default in Word 2000 is 0pt before, 6pt after. We've never used the 'auto' spacing that's available in Word 2000.

The bit of the doc that generated the extra pages was a series of tables that started life as an HTML page but it had been transferred to .doc format with Word 2000. There are no raised/lowered characters in the tables but the "suppress extra line spacing at top of page" (or at bottom of page) compatibility option does sound like a suspect to investigate!

Thanks for the feedback.

Ken

[DaveA]

If I remember right if a "Style" is based on the "Normal" style and there are differences in the normal style the they will apply to the other defined style.
So if the normal style on one machine has 10 pt font and another has 12 pt font then you just may get some extra pages.

[stuck]

No, this is not a style thing. It's down to the limitations of converting a Word 2000 doc to Word 2007. I'm not really looking for a fix, as I said, I just thought others might like to know about the pain of playing catch up!

Ken