Are Windows Office file formats nowadays an acceptable format for ripping output?

[gcplau]

Heard from some online printers start accepting Windows Office file formats (.doc,ppt,xls..etc) for output purpose. I had a lot of doubt about it. Any specialist to confirm this?

 

[prepressdork]

Although we prefer not to get them, we have successfully processed PDF files created from Office files. Color often needs fixed (RGB to CMYK/spot for example) in the resulting PDF. Publisher can generate a PDF with proper CMYK and spot colors out of the gate.

pd

 

[Stephen Marsh]

As prepressdork mentions, it is all about having an acceptable PDF, which can of course be dependent on the source. For some digital printing conditions, simply having a decent sRGB PDF may be all that is required. For some others or for standard offset, then perhaps converting from sRGB to the press or proofing CMYK condition may be best. This could be done in PDF Workflow software such as Kodak Prinergy, however most of this can be done from Acrobat Pro, however PitStop Pro/Server has more power and flexibility and later versions ship with some sweet “just make my office PDF work” preflight profiles. Obviously for spot and or 2 colour work, more work is required than for CMYK.

http://prepression.blogspot.com.au/2...k-to-cmyk.html

The biggest thing is to get the client to make the conversion from MS Office to PDF themselves, so that they are responsible for the text flow, font embedding etc.


Stephen Marsh

 

[wonderings]

We print from office files somewhat regularly. Now we are not working with spot colours or anything like that in word, if we were we would advice them to go a different route. Thankfully never had someone colour critical that is working in word for print, which is just so backwards. 99% of all word files are flyers and things of that nature that just need to be pleasing. I simply create a pdf, send it back to them to approve as Microsoft Office is notorious for opening different on different machines, versions and OS's.

Is it acceptable? I would say yes if you just want a cheap print, if you are doing high end design then no, not acceptable.

 

[gcplau]

Although we prefer not to get them, we have successfully processed PDF files created from Office files. Color often needs fixed (RGB to CMYK/spot for example) in the resulting PDF. Publisher can generate a PDF with proper CMYK and spot colors out of the gate.

pd

Prepressdork...may I ask which version of the office files formats, that you're able to convert them to PDF smoothly? Any minimum version requirement?

 

[pacart]

We will accept whatever our customer can get to us, but most of the problems I run into with the Word is fonts. Unless you get a PDF file to show you what it is supposed to look like, you never know if it looks quite right.

 

[prepressdork]

Prepressdork...may I ask which version of the office files formats, that you're able to convert them to PDF smoothly? Any minimum version requirement?

I don't know about a minimum version but we are using Office 2007.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

Heard from some online printers start accepting Windows Office file formats (.doc,ppt,xls..etc) for output purpose. I had a lot of doubt about it. Any specialist to confirm this?

From over 25 years of dealing with Microsoft Office documents, printing, and PDF on both Windows and MacOS, I would most strongly advise against sending any Office document to a print service provider, hoping that they will get it right.

Why?

(1) Microsoft Office applications have this very nasty habit of reformatting, significantly and sometimes dramatically changing line endings, page breaks, interline spacing, etc. based on the actual environment in which the Office application is running. These environmental considerations include (a) platform and version of same (MacOS or Windows and version), (b) screen resolution and resolution of the currently-selected printer, (c) non-printable margins of the currently-selected printer, and (d) font version.

(2) If you have linked assets including images and/or OLE links to other OLE-compliant programs (such as Excel links from a Word document), there is no simple way to “package” the source document such as you would have with InDesign or Illustrator, for example.

(3) “Font” is a four-letter word beginning with an ‘F’ – unless you were able to package all the fonts used by your Office document and be assured that those exact particular fonts were installed and used to print from by the print service provider, you are setting yourself up for failure. There are many different versions of Times, Helvetica, Arial, Times New Roman, etc. out there, often with widely varying glyph complements, metrics, encoding, and even designs. Mix into this how Windows and MacOS each put their own spins on providing text services and font/glyph metrics to the Office applications on each platform (which are fairly different from each other internally) and you can begin to see why there are problems. And one other little font issue. Although Microsoft Office applications running on MacOS continue to support Type 1 fonts, the same applications under Windows (beginning with Office 2013) do not support Type 1 fonts at all, yielding nasty, unexpected font substitutions.

Our recommendation is for PDF to be generated from inside the Office application using Acrobat (Save as Adobe PDF) using the High Quality Print joboptions on the system on which the content is being authored. This would minimalize any unexpected differences from what you see in the Office application to what you see in Acrobat. If there are differences, you are at least at the source and can make adjustments at the source. And what you see in the PDF file is the exact layout that will be actually printed. (Note that the native Microsoft Save as PDF is exceptionally problematic under Windows with issues ranging from an inability to embed OpenType CFF fonts to proper pass through raster images other than sRGB.)

FWIW, the Office applications pretend to be sRGB-based, although if you insert CMYK (DeviceCMYK or ICC-tagged CMYK), Grayscale (DeviceGray or ICC color-managed Gray), ICC-tagged RGB, LAB, or true bilevel monochrome raster images in an Office document, the raster images will pass through the PDF creation process (at least the Adobe PDF process) unscathed. Since there is no spot color support in Microsoft Office applications.

Bottom line, use PDF (all fonts embedded, subsetted OK) as the exchange medium for printing from Office.

- Dov Isaacs, Adobe Systems Incorporated

 

[michaelejahn]

Bottom line, use PDF (fonts fully embedded) as the exchange medium for printing from Office.

- Dov Isaacs, Adobe Systems Incorporated

What he said. Even if you can't convince a customer to make the PDF file on their system and send THAT PDF file to you, then you absolutely should always export to a PDF/X file and send that back to the customer as a doigital PROOF.

 

[mastegman]

As Dov describes in detail working with PDFs made from MS Office is fraught with danger and ensures only one thing... The longevity of the working life of the Prepress Operator with the skills and knowledge to sort them out.

 

[gcplau]

Dov....what can I say...I must applaud to your detailed and authoritative reply....I guess no one will object that Window's major client sector is quite different from Apple....and thus I do believe that there're many aspects required by the graphic arts industry are more respected in the Mac OS environment than Windows OS (am not sure how far Win10 narrow this gap).... and it seems that the Apple-Adobe tide is stronger than Windows-Adobe tide due to more common target sector.

Mike...do you think PDF/X is more geared towards the press and CMYK as destination...? Any other PDF version that's most late binding and device independent ... even the final output will go to wider gamut like sRGB inkjet output?

 

[gcplau]

Hello Dov, sorry forgot to ask Microsoft Office Publisher on top of Office formats...?

 

[Joe]

They are NOT and acceptable format for print production. Yes we accept them but if anything goes south in the job we are not responsible for it and customers are told this up front.

 

[gcplau]

Joe, Tks for the input.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

Hello Dov, sorry forgot to ask Microsoft Office Publisher on top of Office formats...?

What do you want to ask about Microsoft Publisher?

The fact is that Microsoft Publisher is really problematic for publishing workflows for any number of reasons other than plain old snobbery.

Like other Microsoft Office applications, it does not support placement of PDF; at best you can import EPS (how 20th century!).

There is no Acrobat PDFMaker for Publisher so you are stuck with producing PDF either via Microsoft's Save As PDF or by printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance. In the former case, you lose support for anything other than TrueType fonts. OpenType CFF and Type 1 fonts simply don't export. Printing to Adobe PDF allows Type 1 and OpenType CFF embedding, but you lose live transparency support.

Unfortunately, there is a large number of users of this product who see this as a “free” product once they have the Microsoft Office suite, but who have very limited savvy in terms of graphic arts and workflow.

- Dov

 

[gcplau]

Thanks a lot Dov, sorry to have you answer separately for Office formats and Publisher format.

 

[David Milisock]

Like it or not it goes back to the knowledge of the file creator. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are certainly issues due to low resolution a assumed sRGB color space. With that said I get MS Publisher files that work far better then some Adobe CC files MAC or PC from so called professionals.

 

[gcplau]

software capability and user experience a separate issue, isnt it?

 

[David Milisock]

software capability and user experience a separate issue, isnt it?

​Yes and no, a capable program in the hands of an idiot is useless, (read here most MAC/PC Adobe files I get), a (what I like to call) device dependent application used in the hands of a knowledgeable person works fine. The user simply limits the design to meet the requirements of the GDI (CUPS in MAC) PS and ICC.

MS Publisher works as long as the user knows their stuff and stays away from N color transparency, I suggest that before they start their file they set the default printer to a PS printer.

 

[Greg_Firestone]

MS Publisher works as long as the user knows their stuff and stays away from N color transparency, I suggest that before they start their file they set the default printer to a PS printer.

Hi David,

I'm not familiar with the term "N color transparency". Are you referring to Device N and transparency as a single item?