MS Word does not print pictures

virtualban

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Feb 16, 2007
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Hi everybody!
Does anybody know of any case and hopefully any solution to this problem:
Word does not display pictures as it should according to print preview.

Situation:
A text box with a table inside and pictures inside of the table. All that is surrounded by an autoshape, and the text box and the autoshape are grouped together, so they can move freely around. The point is to put together product preview and explanation and then move them around freely so that the boss can decide the display order. But here's the problem: the second of these groups does not print the pictures of the main product. I worked on each box independently on a new document from a template I created for the purpose. The problem appeared only after joining them together in a big document. Close to the same thing appears on all following pages, with the pictures for the second and third group missing and the pictures of the first group being printed correctly.
I got a couple of screenshots, from MS Word (with the actual table being shown but with no borders, you know), from the print preview of MS Word and from the actual print to virtual printers (it does that thing on real printers too).

is.jpg
This is how the document IS in MS Word
should.jpg
This is how it SHOULD appear printed according to print preview
does.jpg
This is what actually DOES print.

Now, just for the record, I am downloading OpenOffice at work right now. If OO resolves the problem I will let you know. Currently I am trying to figure out how to solve the problem in current conditions. Already tried Device Independent Bitmap for the pictures and Table inside the table, but the results are exactly the same as in the screen shots.

Thank you in advance for your consolation words (and I am being optimistic now, I don't really hope for a solution.
 

virtualban

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Feb 16, 2007
625
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Update

The bad news first: Open office displayed an unusable mess from the document I wanted, too bad :(

The "good" news: I found the bug in MS Word, and worked around it to display a good view of what I needed.

Apparently MSW ignores the VAlign top or similar at the moment of deciding whether something will be printed or not. So, being the vertically middle of the cell containing the pictures outside of the print area of the text box containing the table itself, Word decided it would not print. What's still puzzling me is why this does occur only on some of the tables? Maybe it is not whether the vertically middle of the cell is inside the text box margins but a combination of that with page margins or page margins alone. Anyway, I just split cells and merged some of them, and voila.

I hope this helps anybody.