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HalvaJoy
Participant
July 16, 2009
Question

wrong PDF page size in Excel

  • July 16, 2009
  • 3 replies
  • 20701 views
When I use PDFMaker to "print" the print area of one particular spreadsheet, the Adobe PDF page size is 11.18 x 14.47 inches.
When I use Adobe PDF printer, the Adope PDF page size is 8.5 x 11.0.
Excel Page size = Letter (8.5 x 11.0)
Excel Page orientation = Portrait
Excel Page Parameter = Fit print area to 1 page x 1 page
Selected Printer = Adobe PDF
Selected Paper size in Adobe PDF dialog boxes = Letter
Selected Paper size in PDFMaker Preferences = Letter
When I change the Excel Page Size to Tabloid (11 x 17):
Adobe PDF printer creates a page size of 11.0 x 17.0
Adobe PDF Maker creates a page size of 11.0 x 17.0
Can anyone shed light on the problem experienced by PDFMaker on the Letter sized request?
I am running:
Windows XP, SP3
MS Excel 2007
Acrobat 9.1.2
PDFMOfficeAddin.dll version 9.1.0.0
PDFMExcel.dll version 9.1.0.0
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    A
    Avni_bu
    Participant
    May 12, 2010

    Hello everyone!

    It's been long since this topic was active but I just wanted to share my solution to a similar problem.

    I was trying to use the built-in Save as PDF function of Excel 2007 and my sheet which also had some headers and footers was not coming out correctly.

    From Page Layout tab, I clicked the small icon on the corner of the Page Setup. Then I clicked the Header/Footer tab and removed the tick next to where it says "Scale with document" and viola! I miraculously could export my sheet in the correct page size.

    May this be helpful to not just who have had this problem before, but also the ones that will come afterwards!

    Cheers!

    Avni

    N
    n0kjf
    Participant
    October 7, 2011

    Yes, this was a big help, Thanks

    Lew

    Allta Media
    Community Expert
    Allta MediaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 21, 2009

    This is probably related to a known issue in Excel 2007. Additional detail can be found in the MS knowledgebase article "When you save an Excel 2007 workbook as a PDF file or as an XPS file, the layout differs from the layout in the Excel 2007 workbook".

    The workaround is to configure the dpi settings in Excel 2007 to match the dpi settings of the PDF file.

    1. In Excel 2007 select the Page Layout tab.
    2. Under Page Setup, click the Page Setup dialog box.
    3. In Print Quality select 600 dpi for  standard output.
    H
    HalvaJoyAuthor
    Participant
    July 21, 2009

    The work-around is not working in my case.

    I changed the Print Quality setting to 600 dpi, and I confirmed that the PDF setting for PDFMaker was 600 dpi, too.

    The page size of the resultant PDF is still the weird 11.19 x 14.47.

    It is correct (8.5 x 11.0) when I use the Print function to print with the Acrobat PDF printer.

    I note that the MS article is explicitly directed at the SAVE AS functionality inside of Excel, rather than a add-in, such as PDFMaker.

    Also, by the way, I insured that the Adobe PDF printer was selected as the current printer.

    This is a most annoying, and fascinating problem!

    Has either work-around avoided the problem for anyone else?

    Allta Media
    Community Expert
    Allta MediaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 21, 2009

    There is an Adobe Technical note on this as well so it's not just a Save As issue:

    http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/403/kb403530.html

    If you don't use any fancy Excel 2007 features, you can try saving back to 2003 to see if can print correctly.

    T
    toddstout
    Participant
    July 21, 2009

    We've run into this exact same issue. Acrobat 9, Excel 2007, XP SP3.

    We were able to isolate it to uses who had their currently selected printers set to either Dell Color Lasers 51xx or Xerox Phaser 6200 Color Lasers (very similar printers). When they changed to an HP LaserJet (or the AdobePDF printer) selected as the current printer, the problem did not occur.

    Somehow it seems that the PDF maker isn't getting the correct paper size from the printer driver in all cases. Not sure if this is an issue with Excel, Acrobat or the print driver. Haven't been able to find a fix, but can at least work around it.

    T
    toddstout
    Participant
    January 26, 2010

    We were able to work around this issue in the case where it was a Dell laser printer driver by diabling the "Apply Zoom To Application" setting in the advanced printer settings.  Somehow the print driver zoom was interfering with the page scaling in Excel to send the wrong paper size to the PDF maker. While this only works if the driver allows that feature to be turned off (our Xerox Phaser doesn't), at least it's something.   I'm not sure why the printer settings for the currently selected printer would be interfering with the PDF maker output, but it does.

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