Microsoft Word 2011 has a serious PDF export bug

[Geico Caveman]

Since figure captions and figures in Word do not move together, I
usually create a text box, insert the figure and then its caption.

This arrangement worked for me on Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 for
Windows and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac perfectly. I was able to
export PDFs etc. without any issues.

Two months ago, I upgraded to Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac.

Today, I tried to export to PDF and found to my horror that all the
textboxes (which contained figures and captions) in the final PDF were
empty and the original docx (xml) was a little messed up (floats had
moved around a bit).

I then saved the 2011 docx as a doc file and then exported that doc
file to PDF, which worked flawlessly as before.

There is something seriously wrong in the PDF export feature of
Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. This has been tested on a different Mac
by a colleague of mine. Same thing.

I do not know if this affects Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows as well
(not that that is relevant to my case).

 

[Daniel Cohen]

Today, I tried to export to PDF and found to my horror that all the
textboxes (which contained figures and captions) in the final PDF were
empty and the original docx (xml) was a little messed up (floats had
moved around a bit).

I then saved the 2011 docx as a doc file and then exported that doc
file to PDF, which worked flawlessly as before.

What happens if you don't export, but instead use the Mac's Print to PDF
feature. If it works it would save a step.

 

[Justin]

What happens if you don't export, but instead use the Mac's Print to PDF
feature. If it works it would save a step.

Thats what I was going to suggest.
It seems Microsoft once again didn't do their homework in researching
what was needed. OSX had built in PDF writing since God-knows-when.
Forever?

 

[Geico Caveman]

What happens if you don't export, but instead use the Mac's Print to PDF
feature. If it works it would save a step.

Same error as before.

The only thing that works is what I mentioned above.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Today, I tried to export to PDF and found to my horror that all the
textboxes (which contained figures and captions) in the final PDF were
empty and the original docx (xml) was a little messed up (floats had
moved around a bit).

It's a known issue. I have the same problem with PDF images inside text boxes.
When you generate a PDF, the resulting file shows them as blank.

A critical problem for us here!!
I would *strongly* encourage you to use Help > Send Feedback in Word to
let MS know how significant you consider the issue to be.

My only workaround is to generate the PDF from Word 2008 (or Word 2010
under Windows).

Corentin