Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I have a mystery that needs solving. I am writing a book and I am almost finished except this problem is holding me up.

On one or two of my pages I have these mysterious black vertical lines that show up only when the page is printed, but they do not exist in the document. I have tried turning on the non printing characters to see if they show up there, but they don't. I have tried turning on the navigation field and checking all the pictures and text frames, etc. but again, nothing appears there either. It's not a table or a margin and there are no hidden anchors. I have tried deleting both the picture and the text and caption box underneath it, but to no avail.

I have tried covering up the lines by inserting a picture of a big white square over top of where it seems to be in the document and playing around with bringing the picture forward and pushing it to the back , but the lines show up over top of this white square picture.

I am at a loss... how do you delete something that doesn't seem to exist?

Strange indeed. Have you tried to export as PDF?
Can you upload a sample file (see How to attach a document here)?

Thank you for your response Hagar.

Although I have to decline uploading a sample (which is why I had uploaded the picture instead) you have already helped me. Since this document is an 80 page book I am about to have published any day now (and I don't have a sample, only the gigantic file) , I can not risk a reveal online in case of theft of intellectual property by the millions of internet users out there (you can't be too careful these days).

However, I had never tried exporting it as a PDF and so I gave that a whirl. Sure enough, the lines have disappeared in PDF format and the pages print out vertical line free!
Since I will be sending this in to be published in PDF format, this solves my problem! (Not the mystery, but it does solve the problem)

Sometimes it's the little things that are the simplest. I really appreciate your help! Thanks so much!

Great!
Just for the record, in the tutorial to upload a file, there are tricks to replace the text by dummy text so that no sensitive data is disclosed.

It's not the text, so much that is the sensitive part as it is the pictures.... it's a craft book and the pictures are the more valuable part.

But that is great to know about the replacing of text with dummy text . I will remember that for next time. Thanks!

Out of curiosity, do you only get the lines with certain pictures, or do they happen with any pictures?
If they happen with any pictures, you could create a new document with some pictures that have nothing to do with your project, and then upload/attach that document.
If it's just specific pictures, do to the concerns you've already stated, I'm (at the moment) unable to think of a reasonable solution or alternative suggestion.

I'm also curious as to what might be causing this, just from looking at the image you provided. I don't recall seeing anything like it before.

You could send the document to one of us privately, with the understanding that the document would be kept confidential. I suppose the file size could be a problem for email as well; I think I've gotten emails with attachments up to, maybe, 20Mb or so with no problem.

Alternatively, you can make a copy of the document with the images removed--work with a separate copy, of course! Just open the document in a zip archive tool and remove the "Pictures" folder. The document can still be opened by OO; the images will appear as empty rectangles. If you get that far, try printing without the pictures and see if the problem still occurs.