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Excel Plots Not Printing to PDF Correctly

Participant ,
May 13, 2018 May 13, 2018

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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

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

May 27, 2018 May 27, 2018

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. Lin

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LEGEND ,
May 14, 2018 May 14, 2018

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What version of Windows 10?

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Participant ,
May 15, 2018 May 15, 2018

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

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Participant ,
May 27, 2018 May 27, 2018

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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?

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May 27, 2018 May 27, 2018

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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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Participant ,
May 28, 2018 May 28, 2018

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Hi Dov,

Thanks for responding. I have tried the official tech support path and the only option it ultimately offers me is the Community Forums, for which I’m deeply appreciative.  Am I missing a step that would connect me directly with Adobe Tech Support?  That would be great.  I’ve paid $300 for the Pro version, for which I would expect some type of official coverage, so if I'm missing that connection, please send me a link.

Secondly, I'm a little confused by your explanation.  Microsoft is the primary software here, probably the most common in the world, and Adobe Acrobat is a plug-in to that software, so I would fully expect Adobe to adjust its product to work with the parent application, in this case Excel.  As I think I noted, the workbook in question will print/display just fine when sent to a physical printer, so if Canon can execute this properly, why can’t Adobe?  Yes, sometimes lines/page will vary by printer a bit but nothing is ever just truncated.

Without knowing any of the internal programming details, I would fully expect that at the print option that Microsoft would determine the proper formatting and send that information to the destination output, whether that’s a physical printer or a PDF file created via Adobe.  This information originates in the Microsoft document.  Of course, they would be the ones to create that data stream and establish the print conventions.

The printers correctly interpret the commands and generate correct output.  Why can’t Adobe?  As big a player as Adobe is too, I can’t understand why if there is some special data accommodation that you need from Microsoft to generate reliable output, why you can’t get them to provide it.  As you’ve noted, the PDF function is actually embedded in various Microsoft products, so you obviously have a business relationship. 

I have also tried this same print-to-workbook option using Microsoft’s (albeit functionally inferior and less ubiquitous) XPS file-creator option and the output looks fine.  Again, what’s their secret?  Adobe is in every other way a better product; that’s why I paid $300 for it. 

I submitted this problem to another help web site and several folks touted Adobe knockoffs like PrimoPDF and BullZip which they claim work flawlessly in the print-to-PDF file capacity.  Again, how can the massive Adobe giant with all of its talent and array of products not solve this truncation problem with your primary business partner?  Certainly this would be a win-win.

I realize that you’re just the messenger, and I'm not trying to beat you up, but this should not be hard. Printing a workbook that someone creates is almost always it’s ultimate destination.   Printing to a PDF file should be easy and follow the same path.  And I'm not seeing how Microsoft is “damaging” anything in passing along formatting parameters, and that certainly isn’t evident in that Excel prints just fine to paper, and these other PDF plug-ins seem to manage just fine.

I'm moving from printing less to paper and printing more to files as PDF’s, which has the best history of backward compatibility.  When your signature PDF product Acrobat can't convert an Excel document into a correct end product without corruption, fumbling with workarounds to accomplish basic functionality as you suggest just seems really poor.  I know this is not your fault, but it’s hard to believe there’s no solution after what seems to be a number of years.

Maybe I really am missing deeper technical issues, but again, other products seem to have solved it.

Again, thanks for the response and your time.  Please pass on my information and questions.  $300 is a lot of money to spend to still have to cope with these kinds of functional issues.

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May 28, 2018 May 28, 2018

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As I tried to explain, by the time Adobe's software obtains the data from any of the Microsoft Office applications, the formatting is a fait accompli, already done. Microsoft positions the content on the output page, Adobe doesn't. Neither Acrobat's components for PDF creation nor do any print drivers directly interpret the Microsoft documents. They receive GDI or EMF commands from those applications that have page formatting already done. Generally you find that Microsoft's own PDF creation exhibits similar if not the same issues as do the “knock-offs” you cited.

The fact that the content appears correctly when printed on one device simply means that when formatting the original document, the application was aware of your destination being that particular device or one very similar. If you had a different printer selected when doing the formatting on the screen which would have shown different screen results, you would likely have had less than satisfactory results printing to your Canon printer.

Adobe Technical Support can't help you with this simply because neither they nor anyone in Adobe engineering can fix what is fundamentally a Microsoft design problem.

I know this is frustrating for you; it is even more frustrating for Adobe since we can't do anything about it. Microsoft would need to make massive internal changes to its layout engine to fix this issue, which by the way has been known about for well over 25 years, before Acrobat 1.0 was even released. The irony is if Microsoft was to “fix” the layout inconsistency problem, virtually all existing Microsoft Office documents would have the possibility of showing different results on screen and/or print.

BTW, if you go to the Adobe website and follow the steps on the support page, you will ultimately end up with the option of calling Adobe at +1 800-833-6687.

          - Dov

PS:     I am not in support, but rather, in Acrobat engineering. I've been dealing with this Office craziness with printing inconsistencies and PDF creation inconsistencies due to what I discussed above for over 28 years! This is nothing new.

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

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New Here ,
May 05, 2020 May 05, 2020

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While I am very dismayed by your response, Mr. Isaacs, I am so thrilled to hear something from someone who really knows what they're talking about! Thanks for taking the time to respond!

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New Here ,
Jan 07, 2024 Jan 07, 2024

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Happy New Year Dov;

I have experienced this problem in Excel (with Acrobat Pro XI) since I converted from a stand-alone MS Office to the new, annual 365 version, but only with charts, not spreadsheets. After reading your posts (and thanks for being responsive to this issue!), I found the problem was resolved by moving the chart from a graphics tab to an element in a sheet tab. Typically, I opt to only print letter size, but the chart size, includinng margins, needed to be adjusted to to the paper size (8.5x11) i in order for the printout to appear the same as on-screen print preview. Before and after results are attached.

I used to export multiple charts at one time using Excel's Export (to XPS/PDF) to save time and effort, but Export and Print yielded the same results. This workaround I found through trial & error, while somewhat slower, avoided immense frustration. Hope other users find this helpful. BTW, I agree with your position that it is a Microsoft issue.

Regards, Steve McAdams

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New Here ,
May 05, 2020 May 05, 2020

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WSC33, Don't know if you ever found a solution, but I just had a bit of a eureka w/a similar problem. I am using a MacBook Pro 10.15.3) and had a spreadsheet that looked fine on screen and would print perfectly. If I saved it as a PDF, it again looked fine on the screen, but printed all screwy. If I took a screenshot, it would look fine on screen, but (understandably) printed fuzzy. I needed a PDF that would print perfectly. I tried all myriad of ways and then saw in my printer dropdown an option for "Save as Adobe PDF" vs. just "Save as PDF," which is what I'd been choosing. When I chose "Save as Adobe PDF," I was then presented with a wide variety of options for which type of PDF. I chose "High Quality PDF" and it worked. 

Screen Shot 2020-05-05 at 4.36.17 PM.pngScreen Shot 2020-05-05 at 4.36.33 PM.png

  

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New Here ,
Apr 08, 2023 Apr 08, 2023

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(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.

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