Google is unforthcoming with the answer.

I have a large Word 2007 document, which includes various photos and diagrams, that i want to print at as high a quality as possible.

If i save it as a pdf, will any resolution be lost? I want to do this because the Word doc has a habit of unformatting itself when i transfer it between computers.

Sorry for the dull question and thanks in advance for the advice 🙂

office 2010 gives you the option to save low or high quality pdf

if you download a PDF writer like CutePDF, you can ‘print’ it as a PDF so preserving all formatting

a brief experiment has shown some loss at high quality setting, quite marked loss of sharpness and it brings out the JPEG artefacts a bit

Mrmichaelwright – i don;t have access to Word 2010, but Word 2007 also lets you save as a pdf at “standard” (for printing) or “low quality” (for web use) resolution. But i still don’t know if standard is as good as the Word doc itself.

Highclimber – i don’t think that would offer me anything above saving it as a pdf through Word itself, would it?

EDIT: Thanks for conducting the experiment MMW – that’s what i feared. I might have to sod about reformatting on the computer that’s attached to the printer then.

If it’s vector stuff, like visio drawings, then that should all be preserved and be pin-sharp in the PDF.

Bitmap things (photos and the like) will have some degree of compression. If you want the best quality, may be best running it through of the bits of software that pretends to be a printer, and get more options around how much compression is applied.

Cheers simon_g, it’s jpegs and gifs so i’ll avoid the pdf then.

here’s a screen grab

on the right is a PDF, high quality from word using a (not very good) JPEG inserted.

on the left is the file i inserted

not a very good test image but it just happened to be on my desktop

clicky to view in original 1920*1080 res

compare by mrmichaelwright, on Flickr

CutePDF should preserve all formatting but I cannot be certain it will be high enough res for your requirements. it’s a free download and doesn’t take a long time to install to see if its good enough

Rip it straight from the file in Acrobat. Word’s integrated PDF distiller settings are well squiffy.

Or originate it in something that can handle images properly in the first place. Word is useless.

Rip it straight from the file in Acrobat. Word’s integrated PDF distiller settings are well squiffy.

I only have the reader version of Acrobat unfortunately 🙁

Or originate it in something that can handle images properly in the first place. Word is useless.

Too late for that, it’s 248 pages long. Plus i like the way Word makes tables of contents, footnoting and referencing (with Endnote) easy. Out of interest though, what would you recommend? Illustrator?

word may also have compressed the images when you save, not sure on 2007 but this is set to on by default in 2010. This time i used cutePDF set to 1600dpi, it looks about the same which would suggest that word has compressed the image (although i never saved the document so possibly not)

compare 2 by mrmichaelwright, on Flickr

I realised you already had the document, I was being glib 🙂

Endnote is pretty good, I have to agree. Otherwise I’d go InDesign.

My ex used to rave about InDesign, she’s an architect. Maybe i’ll give that a go next time

Be sure to have a first-aider handy when you check out the price of InDesign:

Shopping results for adobe indesign

Adobe InDesign CS5.5 – Mac – DVD-ROM – English
£643 – 52 stores
Adobe InDesign CS5.5 – PC – DVD-ROM – English
£500 – 49 stores
Adobe InDesign CS5 – PC – DVD-ROM – English
£501 – 48 stores

❗

Actually i’ve got access to InDesign on the uni network (but not the full version of Adobe Acrobat… silly IT dept)

You can tame Word with good use of styles and working practise. Have you got ‘automatically update’ checked for your styles? That’s a quick way of shagging up your document when moving between machines.