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Melissa Sweet wrote:
>
> Does anyone know.....are there any print industry preflighting or font
> collection tools for MS Office products for either Windows or Mac?
>
> Melissa
> Microsoft Certified Professional
Sort of.
MS Office is not designed to produce work for the press. Every time you
open a Word file, it looks to see what your default printer is and
reflows text to accommodate it--not something you want to happen when
you send a Word file to a printer.
The easiest solution (other than avoiding MS Office altogether) is to
print to a PostScript file, use Adobe Acrobat Distiller to convert the
PostScript file to a PDF file, and then view the results using Acrobat
Exchange.
Be sure to set up Distiller to embed all fonts. This eliminates the need
to send copies of your fonts to the printer (which would probably
violate your license agreement anyway), and it locks the page breaks
where you want them.
There are more subtleties to learn about graphics, but they've been well
covered recently. So check the archives.
HTH,
Dick
PS:I don't have any leads on jobs for tech writers, but if you know any
software developers looking for a great opportunity, send 'em to me.