<p>My D is trying to finish her grad school applications this weekend and needs to convert her resume from a docx file (Mac 2011 office suite) to a PDF. For some reason when she saves it as a PDF, it changes some of the formatting. The underscore lines become irregular in size and the bottom lines of the resume get cut off. She sent it to me to try and I did manage to figure out to save it by printing it in word to a PDF format. That solved the problem with the bottom lines but the underscores are still mismatched. I can’t figure out how to remove them either. </p>
<p>I assume she has a Mac. Or you do. Print the file (File/Print). When the print dialog opens, look on the bottom left next to the question mark. There’s a PDF label with a down arrow. Select it and try some of the options, notably save as pdf. You may also be able to open the document in Preview as a pdf and see how it looks and then print it from there. When you print, a Mac can turn any document into a pdf. Save it where you want - and btw I suggest showing the .pdf suffix so you can see that it’s that kind of file. And you should be done.</p>
<p>It’s not strange at all. For whatever reason not everything converts correctly when saving from a Word file to a PDF or vice versa. I’ve run into this problem myself while using a Mac. Coincidentally it was also with my resume. Font styles changed, etc. </p>
<p>A few things to try:</p>
<p>Save a copy as a doc file instead of a docx. Open up the new doc file and try the conversion. </p>
<p>Email to a friend with a Windows computer and ask them to convert it. (I’ve not used a Windows computer in several years so I don’t recall if it eliminates the problem.)</p>
<p>Try saving it as a text document and then converting it to pdf. </p>
<p>I don’t think I tried this, but there is a way to “lock” a word file so that it can only be changed with a password. She might try password protecting the file and then doing the conversion.</p>
<p>I’m going to guess that neither of you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat. I think I ended up editing the pdf using the full version. (It’s been a couple of years since I ran into this problem for something really important like a resume.)</p>
<p>This thread reminds me though–need to update my resume. </p>
<p>Also, you need to see the hidden text, what are sometimes called invisibles or non-printing characters - meaning the formatting. In Word, as I remember, you have to go to the view menu to select reveal formatting … but my version is old and I don’t use it. Then you may be able to delete the offending crap.</p>
<p>Two caveats. First, Word has always, always had issues with odd spacing between lines that can’t be altered. The only solution is to make a new document and then copy in the text but not that area because the bad space will copy too. Second, using spaces in Word rather than tabs often causes misalignment when printing. My (limited) understanding is this goes all the way back to Word’s origins when MS decided to make Word both a character and style sheet formatting program, but that’s getting arcane.</p>
<p>Another option is to open it in Pages, which is now $20 in the Mac App store. It opens Word documents and then you can see the invisibles and make it print properly.</p>
<p>You can also try exporting in RTF format and opening it in any text processor - like Text Edit, but the results may need a lot of cleaning up.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone. I did try most of what you suggested and got nowhere. Fortunately, I have a lovely niece in a different time zone who knew what to do. I emailed it to her and she sent back, not one but four versions of the resume to choose from. Coincidentally she was on a pc so that might have been part of the solution. Anyway, the day is saved and the applications will be sent!!! Thank you!</p>