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W
WSC33
Inspiring
May 13, 2018
Answered

Excel Plots Not Printing to PDF Correctly

  • May 13, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 18110 views

I often save my Excel sheets as PDF's. Sometimes the bottom part of my graphs do not print to PDF correctly; the bottom part of the plot is missing. What’s causing that and how can I fix it?

W10, Microsoft Office 2016, Adobe Pro DC.

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Dov Isaacs

I'm still waiting.  BTW, when I display these pages having selected my Canon printer instead of Adobe, the graphs display perfectly, so that indicates there’s something wrong with what Adobe Pro is doing here.

Any ideas?


Still waiting? For what? Please understand that these forums are primarily responded to by volunteers on their own time. This is not official Adobe Technical Support. But with that having been said…

Yes, this “has been an issue for a long time” and in fact, it has been an issue since the very first release of Microsoft Office applications. And Microsoft knows about it. Simply stated, these applications (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) all format their output in a printer device-dependent manner. Line breaks, page breaks, margins, etc. may all change depending upon the current printer device selected. The factors involved include the perceived resolution of the target print device, available page sizes, printable areas, etc. You can see this effect if you have multiple printers defined on your system with varying resolutions, printable areas, etc. The output may vary from printer to printer.

For the purpose of generating PDF, either by using Acrobat's PDFMaker Save as Adobe PDF / Create Adobe PDF, Microsoft's internal Save as PDF, or even printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance to create PDF the same problem occurs. The formatting (whether line endings, page breaks, graphics rendering such as the graph you refer to, etc.) are all determined by the Microsoft software. The damage is done before the printer drivers or the PDF creators even get the content to either print or create PDF. Regrettably, there is nothing Adobe (or any printer driver providers) can do about this.

As terrible as this sounds, the only viable workaround is to “play around” with your formatting, page setup settings, and page breaks until the particular anomaly no longer occurs. I wish there was something that we could do at Adobe to somehow counteract this behaviour, but the problem is “upstream” from any of Adobe's software.

          - Dov

3 replies

Guy Foxwell
Guy Foxwell
New Participant
July 19, 2024

Use Print to "MicroSoft Print to PDF" and that should generate the dresired output.

S
Steve293133094aca
New Participant
April 9, 2023

(A little late to the party, but I stumbled upon a partial fix.) In later updates of a free-standing Office package I started having problems printing charts from Excel. The scaling was off, and the image would not print on a single page regardless of paper size. My typical print was letter, scaled to fit one page, 600 or 1200 dpi. No problems for years until later updates of Office and even later upgrade to Win 10 and conversion to annual version of Office 365. Now, printing to Acrobat Pro, HP2025 and evening exporting to PDF, the chart would not fit the paper (bottom and RHS cut off) even if it looked proper in print preview. Having problems today (4/8/23), I searched this and other strings of posts for a potential solution. I tried different print-area settings, margin settings, paper sizes, etc, but nothing corrected the scaling problems. I finally lowered the print resolution to 300 dpi, and this seems to have resolved the scaling issue in all of the 3 print modes listed above. At this point, it does not appear to be a compatibility issue with Acrobat, but does appear to be an issue with scaling within the Excel or the 365 application itself. Not a great fix for hi-res applications, but does work well for simple line graphics charts. It you try this fix, please post your results. Best of luck.

MichaelKazlow
MichaelKazlow
Brainiac
May 15, 2018

What version of Windows 10?

W
WSC33Author
Inspiring
May 15, 2018

The latest and greatest. 10.0.16299 Home.  BTW, this has been an issue for a long time.

Dov Isaacs
Dov IsaacsCorrect answer
Brainiac
May 27, 2018

I'm still waiting.  BTW, when I display these pages having selected my Canon printer instead of Adobe, the graphs display perfectly, so that indicates there’s something wrong with what Adobe Pro is doing here.

Any ideas?


Still waiting? For what? Please understand that these forums are primarily responded to by volunteers on their own time. This is not official Adobe Technical Support. But with that having been said…

Yes, this “has been an issue for a long time” and in fact, it has been an issue since the very first release of Microsoft Office applications. And Microsoft knows about it. Simply stated, these applications (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) all format their output in a printer device-dependent manner. Line breaks, page breaks, margins, etc. may all change depending upon the current printer device selected. The factors involved include the perceived resolution of the target print device, available page sizes, printable areas, etc. You can see this effect if you have multiple printers defined on your system with varying resolutions, printable areas, etc. The output may vary from printer to printer.

For the purpose of generating PDF, either by using Acrobat's PDFMaker Save as Adobe PDF / Create Adobe PDF, Microsoft's internal Save as PDF, or even printing to the Adobe PDF PostScript printer driver instance to create PDF the same problem occurs. The formatting (whether line endings, page breaks, graphics rendering such as the graph you refer to, etc.) are all determined by the Microsoft software. The damage is done before the printer drivers or the PDF creators even get the content to either print or create PDF. Regrettably, there is nothing Adobe (or any printer driver providers) can do about this.

As terrible as this sounds, the only viable workaround is to “play around” with your formatting, page setup settings, and page breaks until the particular anomaly no longer occurs. I wish there was something that we could do at Adobe to somehow counteract this behaviour, but the problem is “upstream” from any of Adobe's software.

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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