I have been dealing with a substantial Word document. Over 400 pages, hundreds of tables about 300 modest sized images. Using up-to-date Office 365.
I can do everything within Word that I need. Extensive use of styles has helped a lot.
Trouble is, I don't want to hand out a Word .docx file - I want some easier to use format. Like PDF.
If I try to save a copy as PDF I have problems. It will do so, so long as I choose the Best for Printing option. But always fails if I choose Best for electronic distribution. As I need internal links and a working Table of Contents, that isn't much good.
Tried numerous .docx to .pdf converters - including Adobe's own. Almost all fail and the one or two that worked didn't inspire me with confidence.
So I tried LaTeX. Where the problem was the .docx to .tex conversion. One converter changed a 3.9 MB file into 22.2 MB. With, for much of the document, a separate /put command for each and every character. Trying to run that through LaTeX and, for the first time ever, my 14" MBP got warm. And used over 160% cpu. And over 50 GB of memory. And took forever - and still had numerous errors - some of which I still have not understood. Other converters failed to do anything useful or had errors I couldn't resolve.
Today, I decided to try going via Libre Office - got Word to save a copy as .odt. Then use Libre's word processor to export a Pdf. And it all worked the document is fine, the internal links are fine. But the .pdf was still more than twice the size of the original .docx. Used Adobe's online PDF compressor. And all is well.
(I had tried going via Libre Office a few months ago. Something has changed - before it messed up the formatting. Now, with the steps I used, it is pretty faithful.)
Yes - I have raised the issue with Microsoft...
I can do everything within Word that I need. Extensive use of styles has helped a lot.
Trouble is, I don't want to hand out a Word .docx file - I want some easier to use format. Like PDF.
If I try to save a copy as PDF I have problems. It will do so, so long as I choose the Best for Printing option. But always fails if I choose Best for electronic distribution. As I need internal links and a working Table of Contents, that isn't much good.
Tried numerous .docx to .pdf converters - including Adobe's own. Almost all fail and the one or two that worked didn't inspire me with confidence.
So I tried LaTeX. Where the problem was the .docx to .tex conversion. One converter changed a 3.9 MB file into 22.2 MB. With, for much of the document, a separate /put command for each and every character. Trying to run that through LaTeX and, for the first time ever, my 14" MBP got warm. And used over 160% cpu. And over 50 GB of memory. And took forever - and still had numerous errors - some of which I still have not understood. Other converters failed to do anything useful or had errors I couldn't resolve.
Today, I decided to try going via Libre Office - got Word to save a copy as .odt. Then use Libre's word processor to export a Pdf. And it all worked the document is fine, the internal links are fine. But the .pdf was still more than twice the size of the original .docx. Used Adobe's online PDF compressor. And all is well.
(I had tried going via Libre Office a few months ago. Something has changed - before it messed up the formatting. Now, with the steps I used, it is pretty faithful.)
Yes - I have raised the issue with Microsoft...
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