Not able to print items with a gradient to transparent

[christianfludder]

Alright team, lets see if we can solve this one - its stumped three Microsoft support people so far.

Have an image. I've placed a rectangular shape over this with a gradient from white to transparent to create a nice drop off. Looks great. Click print - transparency not recognised. Go to print and it comes out with that ugly line through instead of the nice gradient. 

What is going on?? Image "Word Viewer" is what I see while editing, and "Print Dialogue" is what I see when I click print. Apparently I'm doing something incorrect at this stage. 

I'm using MacOS 13.2 with Office 365 Microsoft Word for Mac 16.74. (It was the newer version but tech had me install a previous version to see if there was an update issue.)

Word ViewerPrinter Dialogue

[#2]

@christianfludder 

Try converting the document to PDF and then print the PDF, and see if that works.

[#3]

@Stefan_Blom sadly no, this does not work. Thank you for the suggestion!

[#4]

@christianfludder 

Are you saying that the PDF does not display the gradient correctly? 

Or does the PDF display correctly but it doesn't print correctly?

[#5]

@Stefan_Blom when I export to PDF, the same issue is apparent. If I take a screenshot of the gradient/word file, I can print that no issues, but anything to do with printing/exporting will set the gradient issue off.

[#6]

@christianfludder 

Is the original document saved in the *.docx format? Here (Word 2021, version 2307), I can set transparency for (part of) a shape with gradient colors: 

and that formatting survives saving as a PDF:

[#7]

@Stefan_Blom This is what I am trying to do. I have done it previously as well! Yes, the file was created and saved in docx format.