Note that there is a difference between Print Layout view and Print Preview.
Print Layout shows what you *want* to print;
Ah ha! At last we have a "What you want is what you get" word
processor!
Print Preview shows what *will* print.
Except when it doesn't... The cases that I have seen reports of are
listed below; there are probably others.
In Word 2000 and Word 2002, if you have LISTNUM fields in several text
boxes, the numbers may be correct in Print Preview but in incorrect
order when printed. The cure is to move the text box anchors! It turns
out that the LISTNUM fields will be numbered in the order that the
anchors occur in the text stream. I wonder why it works in Print
Preview.
There have been several reports that in Word 2000, nested tables that
break across pages do not print correctly. Print Preview is fine, but
when actually printed there may be large chunks of material missing. I
don't have that version, so I cannot test it.
Print Preview will not show what is going to print from Outline View.
Some field codes that update on printing will not update for Print
Preview. TOC, ASK, and NUMWORDS are examples.
If you make a picture in a footnote full height and go to Print
Preview, Word will hang. (Actually, it might hang when printing too, I
haven't tried that...)
If you expand a picture in the body text to full page size, it will be
on top of your header and footer. This is apparently because Word
considers headers and footers to be in a lower "layer" than graphics
or text. There is no "bring to front" command for headers and footers.
You may be able to get the headers and footers in front of the picture
by using Tools | Options | Compatibility | Print body text before
header/footer. This option only changes behavior when actually
printing, not in the supposedly WYSIWYG "Print Preview" mode.
Print Preview has a bug when displaying two pages at once. It displays
pages 1 and 2 as left and right unless you have mirror margins
selected, in which case it displays odd pages on the right as it
should. This is arguably OK so far, but if you use "Book Fold" it
ought to act like mirror margins but it doesn't; this is definitely
wrong.
There has been a report that in Word 2002 if you use compatibility
settings to turn off features more recent than Word 97, booklets that
look OK in Print Preview will actually print as blank sheets! No
warning or anything…
But on the whole Print Preview is closer to what will print than the
other available choices.
Bob S