MS powerpoint semi-transparent effect doesnt print to Adobe

[electricpete]

Powerpoint has a semi-transparent feature which is very useful to shade in over portions of an image as shown here:

http://home.houston.rr.com/electricpete/ExampleCantPrintToPDF.ppt

I can move the image from powerpoint to word and print it, and it always looks as desied.

But if I try to print this to PDF, it always turns the semi-transparent portion (the orange and green in attachment) into solid colors which hide everything behind them (in this case the curved flux lines that are supposed to show through).

I tried it using:
* Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional (sets up a print drive to send to Adobe PDF)
* pdf995
*PrimoPDF

Each time the results were the same. The Adobe PDF shows the semi-transparent regions as solid (opaque).

Any ideas how to fix this? I have a very large multi-document master word file that I need to consolidate into a PDF and I can't get these figures to convert right.

 

[electricpete]

Just in case my description wasn't clear, here's what it looks like when I try to convert to PDF:

http://home.houston.rr.com/electricpete/ExampleCantPrintToPDF.pdf

 

[electricpete]

I did find out from another forum that printing to pdf from powerpoint using the pdf icon (vs the pdf print driver) does in fact recreates the intended semi-transparent graphics.

Unfortunately,I have many powerpoint objects embedded within word and using the pdf icon from word produces the same undesired behavior (converts semi-transparent to solid).

Example word file:

http://home.houston.rr.com/electricpete/WordCantPrintToPDF.doc

Does anyone have any advice you can to convert my word files to pdf with semi-transparent graphics intact?