WalkingPDF

guide

Converting Word, Excel and images for a production

A production is served as images, and most documents start life as something else. The conversion is where a document quietly changes: a spreadsheet prints across forty pages instead of one, a footer lands in the text layer, a font substitutes and reflows the page. This page lists what has to be true after a conversion and how to check it, without pretending we do the conversion.

What has to be true after a conversion

  • The page count is the one you intended, and it is recorded before numbering.
  • The text layer matches the visible page - no split words, no stray headers.
  • No font substitution moved a line onto a different page.
  • Wide spreadsheets are paginated deliberately, not by the print driver's default.
  • Images that were pasted into a document are still legible at production resolution.

Where it quietly goes wrong

Spreadsheets are the usual culprit: a print area that spans forty pages turns one document into forty Bates numbers, and the document break flags in the load file then disagree with the page count. Font substitution is the second: a document converted without the original font reflows, and a paragraph that fitted on page three now spills onto page four, which changes the page count after the numbering was applied.

What we do about it - and what we do not

We do not convert at launch. Conversion is a Prepare capability, because doing it badly is worse than not doing it. What the audit does is check the result: page counts against the stated ranges, document breaks against page counts, text layers against the pages that should have one, and duplicates across the set.

Frequently asked questions

Will the audit tell me a conversion went wrong?

It tells you the symptoms: a page range that does not add up, a native with no placeholder, a page with no text layer, a document break that disagrees with the page count.

Do you offer conversion as a service?

Not at launch. Conversion ships with Prepare. Today the audit checks a set you have already converted.

Keep reading

guide What a slip sheet for a native file has to contain A production that includes native files - spreadsheets, presentations, anything not printed to images - needs a slip sheet for each one: a page in the numbered set that stands where the native would have been, carrying the Bates number, the confidentiality designation, the original filename and enough metadata to identify the file. Without it the paper set has a hole where the native should be, and the receiving party cannot tell a missing document from a withheld one. guide How to QC an incoming production A production you receive has to load, read and reconcile before anyone can review it. These twelve checks run in the order that surfaces the expensive failures first: does the load file import, does every row have an image, does the numbering hold, and is every page searchable. Run them before the review clock starts, not after. hub Watermark glossary A short glossary of the words used around PDF watermarking, each defined in one or two sentences before any detail: what a watermark is, the difference between text and image marks, what diagonal, background, tiled and confidential mean, and why a dynamic watermark is not the same as a fixed one. Every term links back to the page that shows it in use. guide How to watermark a PDF To watermark a PDF, upload the file, choose a watermark style, type your wording, set the opacity to somewhere between 25% and 35%, apply it to every page and download the marked copy. The whole procedure takes about a minute in a browser, needs no software, and the original file is not changed - you keep the marked copy as a new file. guide What is a PDF watermark? A PDF watermark is text or an image placed on the pages of a document to say something about it - who it belongs to, what state it is in, or who may read it. It becomes part of the page rather than a note attached to the file, so it appears in prints, screenshots and single-page extracts, and it carries no technical protection: anyone can still open, copy and forward the document. guide Batch watermarking PDF files Batch watermarking means applying the same mark to several PDFs so they look like one set. With a browser tool you do it by settling the settings once - style, wording, opacity, colour - then running the tool once per file with those same settings, which takes under a minute each and produces consistent output without installing anything or creating an account.