Thursday, February 17, 2011

Word documents converted to PDF - Images have horiz white lines

white lines appear through images after turning an office document into a pdf via the adobe acrobat pdf utility. images have actually been split up into tiny pieces for some reason.

solution, use the "convert" or "publish" to pdf selection built into the program, usually under "file" somewhere instead of the pdf icon in the toolbar. Seems to be all office 2007 programs including word, publisher, powerpoint, etc.

OK, some observations: These observations are based on the PDFs and the PPTs that Cindy provided. The PPTs were created in PPT07 with both 2007 mode and 2003 compatible mode. There was a PDF created from each, using AA8 for both. (I also created the AA8 PDFs and got the same results as Cindy.

I sent the PPT files to my XP tablet. I opened the Office 2003 compatible file in PPT 2003. The graphic was just a green sheet, no sunset! The green is apparently a background shot. For some reason the sunset photo was totally eliminated.

I sent the picture I had extracted from the PPT in Office 2007 and imported that to PPT in 2003 (this is a machine with AA7 and XP, SP3). Then I got the graphic as expected. You might see if anyone else around has PPT 2003 and has the same problem with the graphic. It was Whoa!! THere are apparently issues with fonts and equations if you use PPT07 and expect compatibility with previous versions (In case I am asked, yes I have all the updates for PPT07).

Once I got the graphic back in Office 2003, I created a PDF with AA7. Then I used the extract graphics in AA7. I got 5 graphics: 4 were the green borders and one was the full sunset picture, with no spliting of the picture into parts as with the files created by PPT07 and AA8. That is where the lines are coming from in your PDF (and the ones I create using Office 2007 and AA8). It appears to be a problem with OFFICE 2007 and AA8. The question is which is causing the problem. Also, are there settings that allow different ways to split the file (graphics and fonts), or is it fixed (then in Office or in AA?)?

We then used another machine to create the PDFs with AA7 with Office 2007. The PDF result was the same as with AA8. It definitely appears that PPT07 is messing up the graphics in the PDF creation. The PDFs created from OFFICE 2007 provide split graphics and do not preserve the originla graphics. I used the export graphics in Acrobat and got 8 or 9 files that were composite portions of the original graphic. Since this did not happen with PPT03, I can only conclude it is an issue created by PPT07.

To further check a suspicion, we used the save as feature of PPT07 to use the MicroSoft PDF creation tool. The end result was what was wanted. The graphics was a full picture, not split into parts that is the cause of a lot of the problem with the AA8 creation. The fonts aIso were not split into graphics as I had found with the print to Adobe PDF. My only conclusion is that someone in MS has decided to screw around so that PDFs created by AA with OFFICE 2007 are messed up and get folks to use the OFFICE tool. I consider this sneaky, but not something that MS has not been doing for years. If I did not have so much invested in my Windows, I would not be using MS products at all. Maybe it is time for folks to start using OpenOffice!

There are probably other observations that can be made, but I have not been real happy with OFFICE 2007, but I tend to use other products anyway. This just gives me more justification for avoiding OFFICE 2007. Overall, I find that OFFICE 2007 is playing games with files, graphics, etc, that you would not expect. I have used vector graphics with fonts included and OFFICE 2007 has changed the fonts to bitmaps or at least graphics, not fonts. If I imported the same graphic in the 2003 compatible mode, the fonts stayed as fonts. These are just a few of the issues that appear to have been ways the MS has decided to mess up folks. Before folks blame Acrobat in the future, maybe you should take a good look at OFFICE 2007 and ask if MS put some hooks in there when using the Adobe PDF printer. I for one do not put such actions past MS. Bill

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Google Chrome always start in INCOGNITO Mode

If you would like google chrome web browser to open in Incognito Mode all of the time which will not save or track any of your internet activities, do the following:

1. Right-click on the Chrome shortcut
2. select properties
3.click into the "Target" box and arrow over to the end of the string.
4. add: -incognito
NOTE: be sure to put a space BEFORE the dash and place the -incognito AFTER the parentheses.
i.e.:
Target: "C:\Documents and Settings\NETWORK\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -incognito

obviously, all of the shortcut path info before the"chrome.exe" will be different then the above...just add the -incognito to the end.

Sometimes working on several computers at once and/or work computers, you dont want to worry about leaving behind login info and browsing history etc.

Article here: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-start-google-chrome-in-incognito-mode-by-default/

For more Chrome privacy settings read here:
http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=14666