I have created a document to illustrate the problem. It was made by editing the original document so all of the properties are identical to my original problem document. It was created on my laptop.



It displays and prints as one page on my laptop which matches what my book printer sees. On my desktop it displays and prints as two pages (see PDFs). As I mentioned earlier, the document displayed identically until a few days ago.

The PDFs were created using Microsoft print to PDF.

Thank you in advance.

Attached Files

	Spacing Test.docx (90.1 KB, 13 views)
	Laptop printed as PDF.pdf (105.7 KB, 14 views)
	Desktop printed as PDF.pdf (121.4 KB, 10 views)

Are both machines set to the same default printer (via Windows > Settings), and if so, do both machines have the same version of the default printer driver?

Word uses the default printer to determine how to lay out the text of a document - the driver describes the area of a page, in which Word adds content. When two computers have different default printers, you can end up with small variances in layout and in print output. (For example, when inspecting your test PDFs in Acrobat Pro, I can see that the desktop version has line spacing of 1.59, while the desktop version has 1.38.)

Note that even if you use the same printer to create a printed or PDF'd document -- in your case, Microsoft's PDF distiller -- the default printer setting is still affecting how Word lays out the document.

In the past, I have seen issues with two users with the same version of Word viewing/printing the same file and getting different page counts due to spacing driven by default drivers, as well as small font-size variations (0.2 pt) when PDFing the same file (with the same PDF program). (The font size in both of your PDFs is the same.)

In your sample document, the Line Spacing is NOT set to "Exactly," so it certainly hasn't been set to a fixed value.

Any variable spacing (Single, Double, Multiple 1.08 etc.) means that the actual spacing between text lines may vary depending on the computer, operating system and printer drivers.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Hello Stefan Blom,

Thank you for responding again.

I never indicated that I had set the spacing "Exactly." I did state that the settings were identical on both computers. That included all paragraph, font, and printer settings.

I understand what you are pointing out and I know that it can be a valid concern for my situation. I know that I can probably replicate the document by setting the spacing exactly but that will require a lot of editing time. I have found that a setting of 14.4 pt will do the trick for a paragraph or a page but changing the style for the main body did not work out.

Because I have been editing this manuscript on both computers for the past few years I am going to continue to try to find out why one of the computers has changed. That may not be possible but I will still try.

On future documents I may be able to avoid this problem by setting the spacing to "Exactly" as you have pointed out. Thank you for that.

Actually, you did state in another message in this thread that you had tried setting the Line Spacing to "Exactly."

September 27:

Peterson and Stefan Blom

Sorry for the delay in responding. I was a way for the weekend.

Yes, the default printer is the same on both machines.

The line spacing is fixed.

Thank you for taking the time to help though.

However, there are many factors involved and basically Word doesn't provide full control over the appearance of a page.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional