Latest update to Word causes incorrect PDF to be generated when exporting to PDF

Word's color model is RGB. Black text is R0 G0 B0, not "black" or grayscale. Please state what job you're trying to get done and why Word's RGB colors pose a problem to getting that job done.

Does the issue also occur if you use the Microsoft Print to PDF utility

Alternatively, with some of the free, third party PDF Printers, such as Primo PDF, you can set the output to be in Black & White

If a rollback to a previous version turns out to be the only solution, instructions are here:

You can report a bug by using File | Feedback | Send a Frown. Include as much detail as possible and don't expect a response.

I am trying to submit a book to a printing company. The printing company allows the book to be composed of pages printed in color and pages printed in grayscale. Pages which contain anything that the preflight analyzer show as containing color have to be printed as color pages. The preflight analysis shows all textboxes as color RGB images and the printer would require those pages to be printed in color. If it was just a couple of pages, I'd say go ahead, but it is almost 200 additional pages which will add significant cost to printing the book -- raising the price of the book substantially.

This problem occurred in between two submission of my book. The first one generated properly and I was cleaning up some other small issues when I submitted the second updated version. The second version all the sudden marked all these text boxes as "RGB color images" even though they are not images and do not contain color. After spending several hours trying to figure out how that happened and running several tests, and also installing Acrobat Pro so I could generate the preflight information myself, I noticed that Word had been updated between the first and second submission.

So I got a computer that had an older version of Word and used that to generate the PDF for my book and discovered that the problem does not occur.

I'm certainly not an expert in color profiles, PDF, etc. But the printing company rejected my submission unless I pay the additional cost to print the extra pages in color.

Thank you. I could not find this. I believe I'll probably need to go back two versions to be sure as the last two versions were 2 weeks apart and just released.

The "PDF Printers" give varying results, none of which are completely correct. The Microsoft one is the worst. The PhantomPDF printer doesn't mark the text boxes as color and gets all the images correct, however, it fails to mark a few diagrams which use fill colors as color. I did not try the Adobe one.

I already have a workaround which is to take the incorrectly generated PDF file and manually convert each of the pages to grayscale using Adobe Acrobat Pro. It took quite a while and required converting 658 pages.