Word has always used information from the active printer driver to optimize the page layout. This is well documented. Just changing printer drivers, let alone printers, can therefore result in layout changes - including the number of pages in a document and which pages different content appears on.


You'll likely find that behaviour programmed into any forum using the same underlying software. Nothing new.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

So because I change printer, I want the document to look different? Come on, this is the 21st century, the printer should print what I want it to. Printers don't hold fonts in memory any more. So what happens when both of us are working on a document and we have different printers?

It's typical of modern programming, remove all the personalisation. Windows start menu for example, it's a mess, I had to get 3rd party software so i could choose how I want my own computer that i paid for.

Word is a text reflow program that really depends on the printer driver software to attempt to make the screen image as close as possible to the printed page. It was designed to produce that printed page, after all.

• Word Doesn't Know What a Page Is by Daiya Mitchell, MVP
• Why has my page layout changed when I open my document on a different machine? by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP

When you change the operating system it is very much like opening your document on a different computer. The programmers of Word are not stupid or malevolent. They face a monumental task.


As far as replacing two spaces with one, there is nothing built into Word that does that. You cannot even create an AutoCorrect entry for doing that. There is a grammar setting that you can choose to mark two spaces at the end of a sentence as a mistake, but that is as far as it goes.



I do not doubt that you have this happening, but it is not Word doing it. My guess is that if you open Word in safe mode, it will not happen. Open Office apps in safe mode on a Windows PC - Microsoft Office


By the way, you are not talking to anyone who works for Microsoft when you post in this forum. This is an independent user-to-user support forum. MS does not see anything you post here. The way to get their attention is through the feedback mechanisms.

• How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office?
• Send Feedback to MS Developers
• Bonus Reading related to MS Feedback system

Then Word and printing is fundamentally flawed. A printer should print the dots requested by the computer. A different printer should print the same dots. My photograph does not change when I print it on HP instead of Epson. Word should convert what it has created n the screen into a simple bitmap for the printer.

Well i didn't change it, and i can't see how anything else could remove double spacing.

Yes, i know, talking to a Microsoft employee it pointless, have you ever tried their forums? Cut and paste nonsense which doesn't answer the question.

If you want a word processor that uses the lowest common denominator when it comes to page layout, look elsewhere.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

If you want to complain, this is not the complaint department, either.

If you read the pages I linked you would understand what is happening. You may not like it, but that is how Word works. It is how Word has always worked.

Then it's working incorrectly. Why should a page be different for me to print on my Epson than for you to print the same document i emailed to you to print on your HP?

A printer should take the dots from the screen and place them on the paper in precisely the same order. if i run a car factory, i don't expect the cars to come out different depending who was on the production line that day!

That it does not work the way you would like does not mean it is working incorrectly. It is working predictably and the way it always has.

Did you read the pages I linked?

You really haven't a clue about how the software works and is intended to work.

Open a document on a system with an active HP printer and its on-screen layout may well differ from when you open the same document on a system with an active Epson printer. Indeed, just switching between a physical printer driver and Microsoft's built-in PDF 'printer' can result in on-screen layout changes. So, yes, in that respect the output does replicate the dots on screen. What changes is where those dots are.

Your car factory analogy is flawed. You should be thinking in terms of different production lines. One would hardly expect production lines for different models to output the same model, regardless of who the workers are...

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

If you can't print the same document precisely the same on any computer with any printer, the programming is fatally flawed, end of story. About time we hired programmers with some common sense instead of screwed up geeks.

Enjoy your life. This thread is closed.