Why does my doc look different on my boss' PC?
A recent thread on an STC mailing list dealt with a resume that looked fine on the owner's MAC but inserted a blank page on a recruiter's PC. The recruiter wasn't very savvy and asked the owner to fix the doc and resend it. Sigh.Several things can affect the way a document in Word looks, some have to do with the computer, and some have to do with the printer.
Font Definition (selected printer)
Even fonts that are supposed to be identical can have slightly a different appearance when processed by different printer drivers. Font definitions can affect both vertical and horizontal spacing. You may find that the page fits one less or one more line, or you may find that a line may fit the final word in one version, but force it to another line in the other version. You can get around this by installing the destination printer driver, even if you don't have access to the printer. It will allow you to check that nothings gone wonky, at least in that way. For example, I always ensure that the Adobe PDF printer driver is selected for my final review and tweak before creating a PDF.
Font Substitution
In the event that the font used to create the document on one computer is not available on the viewing computer, Word will substitute the closest font that is installed. Font substitutions affect both vertical and horizontal spacing. For this reason, when you share word documents, you should probably stick to the standard fonts.
Printer Calibration (the actual printer affects hard copy only)
Printer calibration tends not to affect font spacing. It tends to affect the placement of the content on the physical page. You may have your content perfectly centered on the print preview and then find out that it prints with a bottom margin that's bigger than the top margin by a good quarter of an inch.
Hope this helps.
