MS Word RTF Textboxes Blank on Printout

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C.M. Gogo - 29 Jul 2005 15:58 GMT

Hi,
This is my first post to Google groups, so please excuse me if I stray
from the general etiquette. I've created a RTF document that contains
several textboxes. Some of these textboxes are blank and others contain
a single character in them (just like the appearance of a HTML
checkbox). After I created the document, I opened it in Word 2002 (with
SP3) and looked at the print preview - which shows me the document
exactly as I wanted it to appear. However, when I print it, all the
textboxes print out blank except for the last row.

I've spent a good amount of time looking at the RTF code to make sure
that they are all exactly the same. I've also spent a lot of time
looking at the different options available in Word, but that didnt do
anything either.

If anyone has any clue how I could go about taking care of this, please
respond. I would appreciate any help. Thanks.

CMG

PS I've tried it on three different printers, each with updated drivers
and the get the same result everytime.

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Suzanne S. Barnhill - 29 Jul 2005 16:09 GMT

If you can really see the text boxes in Print Preview, they should print; if
they don't, the problem is with the printer driver. If, however, you are
confusing Print Layout view with Print Preview, make sure that you have
"Drawing objects" checked on the Print tab of Tools | Options.

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Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

> Hi,
> This is my first post to Google groups, so please excuse me if I stray
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
> PS I've tried it on three different printers, each with updated drivers
> and the get the same result everytime.

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C.M. Gogo - 29 Jul 2005 16:47 GMT

Thanks for your quick response Suzanne. I normally work in the Print
Layout view, but I'm not confusing that with Print Preview. I looked at
Tools -> Options -> Print tab and "Drawing objects" has been checked
all along, but still no luck on the printout. To my knowlwdge the
drivers are up to date.

Whats making this exceptionally weird to me is that the last row of
textboxes still print out correctly with the right content. All rows
except the last one print out blank, even though they look like they
have the right content when I look at them in print preview. And to my
knowledge the RTF code of ALL checkboxes is EXACTLY the same.

Can you think of ANYTHING else I could do? Thanks.

CMG

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John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] - 31 Jul 2005 03:00 GMT

I suspect you are looking at the wrong section of the RTF

A Word document is an OLE container: the pieces are not in sequence in the
file.

"Text Boxes" are in fact drawing objects that are in the graphics story, not
the "text" story. It's a separate container. There needs to be a pointer
between the two layers to cause Word to retrieve and paginate the text box
when generating its print output.

I am sure there's a great reason why you are fiddling around doing this in
RTF: I would be much more inclined to do it in HTML (actually, in XML...)
so *I* could read the code :-)

Cheers

On 30/7/05 1:47 AM, in article
1122652039.586889.228560@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, "C.M. Gogo"
<crimemastergogo@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for your quick response Suzanne. I normally work in the Print
> Layout view, but I'm not confusing that with Print Preview. I looked at
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>
> CMG

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Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <john@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

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C.M. Gogo - 02 Aug 2005 19:16 GMT

Thanks for your input John. I decided to abandon the approach of using
text boxes and re-did the row using images of textboxes (checked or
blank). The document does take up slightly more space now, but it
works.

Thanks again for you help.
CMG

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