Page Layouts for Word - working in PDF

[helen]

I've got my page layouts set up but I'm a bit confused about the horizontal border below my header and above my footer. This border appears when I publish to PDF but not when I publish to Word.

The page layout has this code, and the black line is there in Flare, but vanishes when I publish to Word:

Code: Select all

 BorderBottomStyle="solid" BorderBottomWidth="2pt"

Am I missing something obvious here? Currently I'm adding horizontal rules post-publish as I can't go directly to PDF as I still have to change the Properties dialag post-publish.

[LTinker68]

Word is hit-and-miss when it comes to applying borders. It works (or has for me) if you specify a border for a heading style (e.g., h1), but others have reported that it doesn't work in some situations like yours. You can submit a bug report at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx, but I'm not sure if MadCap can take care of the problem since Word is pretty flaky about rendering stylesheet code from sources outside Word.

As a workaround, you might try not applying the border from within the page layout, but rather apply it to whatever tag you're using for your footer. For instance, if you created a custom tag called p.footer, then set the border properties on that tag instead of using the design options in the page layout. See if Word likes that better.

[helen]

Thanks Lisa, I figured it might be down to Word but I wasn't sure.

However, I am confused as to the workaround you suggested. I haven't created a custom tag for the footer.... at least, I don't think I have! The Page Layout Frame properties is where the border is set that Adobe is displaying and Word is not. Sorry, I'm not too sure what you mean.

[LTinker68]

For instance, my normal text is 10pt and black, but I wanted my footer to be 8pt and a blue that matches the page banner, with a border above the text that is the same blue. So I created a class called p.footer and set it to the appearance I wanted, including specifying a border-top style. In the page layout, I turned off the border design for the footer frame, then opened the frame for editing, typed my footer, then applied the "footer" class to the <p> tag. So the border isn't coming from the page layout -- it's coming from the p.footer class defined in the stylesheet.

[RossF]

I submitted this as a bug a while back and was told that it wasn't something they could fix, and that the workaround is to do what Lisa is saying.

[helen]

Sorry for the delay in responding. Thank you for the more detailed explanation - I understand now (and have it working)!