Word to PDF: Tables show white lines (PC)

[vicky romero]

When making a PDF from Word (either using Distiller or PDF Maker) tables that have a colored background, however with no border (except for the light gray border used for visual purposes) are visible as white lines in Acrobat. The problem is more apparent at 125% or more. It's obvious that the grayed-out table border is being captured from Word, however how do I prevent this from happening?

[Norman Pavlov]

In the Word document, go to the Table menu item. There is an option called 'Hide Gridlines'. Click on the double arrows if you don't see it. Selecting this will turn off the white grid lines. Without them Acrobat should convert the Word document without them.

I always figured that if I can see it on the screen, then Acrobat can see it on the screen.

Hope this helps you. :)

[vicky romero]

Thanks for your reply! This seems like a logical solution, but it didn't work. The gridlines were still there, even though they weren't visible anymore in Word, they came though just as before in the PDF.

Any other suggestions anyone?

[Norman Pavlov]

This may sound dumb or you may have already tried these suggestions. There have been instances where (for some mysterious reason) these has worked for me.

First, after saving, exit out of the Word program and then go back into your document and try to pdf again.

Second, try to reboot your computer. There are times where my computer seems stubborn. This is usually when I try to reset my default printer to the distiller. There is a way to batch print from inside of word. (Open>tools>print) but the distiller needs to be the default printer. There have been other occasions where I have had to follow one or both these items to get something to work.

Perhaps there is someone who actually knows why exiting/rebooting works. Perhaps you already tried this and it didn't work.

Other than that, I am stumped as to why the hide grid lines option did not work. Hopefully, someone else has some ideas.

;)

[Johann F Swart]

Vicky, I have tried to simulate your problem on two diferent PCs (with different OS, different Office versions), with a variety of different option settings, and still I could not achieve what you described, even at 1600%, the colour of two adjacent table cells without borders appear solid.
Does this problem only appear with one particular document, or with all documents?
Could you perhaps describe step by step how you construct your tables, bearing in mind that I am not familiar with your Word skills level, so forgive me if I sound presumptuous.

[vicky romero]

Here's exactly the error step by step:

Create a table in Excel, in my case I had every other column with a background color, and left all other columns white. About half of the text in the columns is colored (red and green for positive and negative dollars), and half are black. Then highlight the table and copy (CTRL + C), jump to Word and under Edit>Paste Special choose Paste as HTML. I chose paste as HTML because it’s the only option that will not create another error which looses font color in the PDF. Click here <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.1de90c84/1> to view the posting for this error.

Then create the PDF as normal and the white table lines appear, even when using Hide Gridlines as has been suggested.

Thanks for all of your suggestions thus far. I am on a network, so rebooting did not work, and is probably not applicable. Also this occurs in a weekly document I produce, so it’s not an isolated incident. And yes, Distiller is my default printer.

Thanks again!

[Suzanne Cole]

Ah -- you're converting to HTML. In that case, HTML is using a default format for table borders.

This may be an ugly solution, but what happens if you force the border colors to match the background in the colored columns before copying? I'm not sure that will work, but might be worth a try. Otherwise, you may have to open the HTML objects for edit, and change the entire table to border = 0.