Octopus Overlords

We are transferring documents from Lotus Notes to Word documents. We do this by copying and pasting the Lotus Notes document into a Word template. We then have to go in and clean up the Word document by pasting stuff in the right section.

One feature of the Word document is a table that contains various document properties. If the Lotus Notes document we copy has Section Breaks in it, this table extends off the page in Portrait orientation (but looks fine in Landscape). Once I delete all the Section Breaks, the table snaps to the right size in Portrait mode and the headers/footers that are supposed to be there appear.

Normally this works fine - we have to get rid of the breaks anyway, so no big deal. Occassionally, one of our techs removes all the breaks and the headers/footers appear but the table doesn't snap to the right size. After this point, there is nothing I can add or remove to make it work. I find I have to start over with the original document and remove the breaks again - this has always worked, but I have no idea what they are doing wrong to break it. I've tried removing the breaks in a random order (mimicking a case where they missed one on a first pass and then caught it), but it still always works for me. Any ideas what might be going on?

One other thing - on all the "correct" documents, the margins are 0.8" top and bottom and 0.5" side to side. On the "broken" document, the margins vary, but are not that "correct" ones. I can also fix the document by forcing the margins to the correct size, but I don't know why this works or what is preventing it from auto setting when the techs do it.

What happens if you print them all to PDF with something like NitroPDF and then convert the resulting PDF back to Word with NitroPDF?

I'm just curious. I don't have a good answer for broken tables - I use Word and have been doing IT for over a decade, but would need to be hands-on with the document and process to try and figure it out. I'm not a great contributor to internet search results...

Are all of them using the SAME default template? Is that one tech's machine a little different from everyone else's?

Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:47 am What happens if you print them all to PDF with something like NitroPDF and then convert the resulting PDF back to Word with NitroPDF?

I'm just curious. I don't have a good answer for broken tables - I use Word and have been doing IT for over a decade, but would need to be hands-on with the document and process to try and figure it out. I'm not a great contributor to internet search results...

Thanks for the thought - printing them to PDF is the last step of our transfer process - still broken.

After further work with it, I'm not sure it's the table that's broken. I think it's something about how it applies document formats when there are different sections. I haven't quite been able to figure it out yet, though.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Sat Oct 13, 2018 2:27 am Are all of them using the SAME default template? Is that one tech's machine a little different from everyone else's?

The machines are different - we are all at various points of a 3 year laptop renewal cycle, but it is all the same template. The techs machine is the same (meaning made around the same time) to several other people who have never had the problem.

The documents they are working from have been transferred by contract workers into these new forms. The techs are the only ones having this issue - I can do it and never have the issue. It's really puzzling.