Certain sheets print really small

[Doug Kanter]

OS: Win98SE with all updates. Office 2000 with all updates.

One of my suppliers sends me an Excel sheet which, no matter what I do,
refuses to print correctly. The sheet's designed to fit onto one page. It
prints so the image is about the size of a large postage stamp. This only
happens with my Brother printer. The sheet prints correctly if I send it to
Winfax. I'm not sure I can fault the Brother printer, since about 200 other
commonly used sheets print just fine with that unit.

I've checked all the usual culprits in File/Page Setup, and checked that the
print area is designated correctly. Any suggestions?

 

[Dave Peterson]

If it works for faxworks, but not the brother printer, I'd suspect it was the
Brother printer driver.

Any chance you can visit that manufacturer's site and get a new/fresh copy of
the driver and reinstall it.

Does the brother printer emulate any other printer? (HP Series II used to be
pretty darn common.) Maybe you can try one of the emulation modes?

(If you copy the data and paste to a new worksheet (in a new workbook), then set
up the printer, do you have that same problem???)

Might be a short term workaround until you can find the problem.

 

[Doug Kanter]

If it works for faxworks, but not the brother printer, I'd suspect it was the
Brother printer driver.

Any chance you can visit that manufacturer's site and get a new/fresh copy of
the driver and reinstall it.

Tried that. No dice.

Does the brother printer emulate any other printer? (HP Series II used to be
pretty darn common.) Maybe you can try one of the emulation modes?

The only other object my printer emulates is a doorstop, or sometimes a
pistol target (lately).

(If you copy the data and paste to a new worksheet (in a new workbook), then set
up the printer, do you have that same problem???)

Might be a short term workaround until you can find the problem.

I'll give that last thing a try. Really, this is a matter of curiosity at
this point. If the cut/paste thing works, what does it tell us about the
original? That's the mystery. What did its creator do to make such a screwed
up sheet?

 

[Dave Peterson]

I'm not sure how just copy|paste would help anything. But I was hoping it
would.

I'm not sure why it would print ok on one printer (faxworks), but not the
brother.

I can't believe it would be a macro that the developer (you???) put in. It was
just a wild guess.

Don't put too many bullet holes through it or you'll ruin your boat anchor
(another emulation for the Brother printer!).

 

[Paul Cundle]

I'm not sure how just copy|paste would help anything. But I was
hoping it would.

I think I've seen this suggestion work before, but can't be sure. I
certainly don't know why it would do.

I can't believe it would be a macro that the developer (you???) put
in. It was just a wild guess.

I have produced some stuff for work which uses macros to do the printing and
previewing. Sometimes one particular sheet appears really tiny in one corner
of the page - both in print preview and on paper. The problem can be
resolved by closing and reopening the workbook (not Excel itself) and even
previewing the page manually looks okay, so I reckon our problem could well
be to do with macros. (Un)fortunately, it's not worth my while trying to
work out the exact cause.

Paul C,
--

 

[Doug Kanter]

I think I've seen this suggestion work before, but can't be sure. I
certainly don't know why it would do.


I have produced some stuff for work which uses macros to do the printing and
previewing. Sometimes one particular sheet appears really tiny in one corner
of the page - both in print preview and on paper. The problem can be
resolved by closing and reopening the workbook (not Excel itself) and even
previewing the page manually looks okay, so I reckon our problem could well
be to do with macros. (Un)fortunately, it's not worth my while trying to
work out the exact cause.

Paul C,

Whatever it is, it's spooky. I've been using Excel for 15 years. I can
breeze through the page setup dialogs blindfolded. But, even if I WANTED to,
I don't know how I'd create such a screwed up sheet. I may do the cut &
paste thing, turn it into a template, and send it back to my business
associate & see if he'll replace his broken one.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I figure it's worth a try. The worst you'll lose is 10 minutes. And if it
works, maybe rebuilding the worksheet would fix the problem forever (and that's
just a swag, too!).

Doug Kanter wrote:

 

[Doug Kanter]

Well, at the very least, it would enable me to copy/paste special/values
from the broken sheet to the good one. That's much better than printing to
Winfax, making it into an attachment, opening the Winfax message manager and
printing it there. I can't fax it to my own machine because blah blah
blah....combined phone lines blah blah. Never mind. It's Saturday.