Scaling - Excel 2007

[Mary Fetsch]

I have an Excel 2003 document with scaling adjusted to 45% of normal size.
When I print it in Excel 2007, my columns are wider than in 2003, and my rows
are closer together. This is causing major problems with extra pages and
pages breaking in the wrong places. Is there any fix for this?

Mary Fetsch

 

[Jon Peltier]

Well, you could change the row and column sizes so it prints the way you
want. You will encounter various issues (including distortion) when you use
Excel at less than 100% screen view, and it is not unreasonable to find that
the relative distortion in 2007 does not match that in 2003.

- Jon

 

[Mary Fetsch]

Jon,

Thanks for your response. I realize I can change row and column sizes. I
was hoping maybe someone had some kind of utility to make the 2007 document
look more like the 2003 document. It's a pretty significant difference in
the way they look. This isn't actually my document. It belongs to a user
who has a number of documents in the same format. She's going to have a big
job changing them all.

Mary

 

[Mary Fetsch]

Jon,

I was just reminded that we've been through several Excel upgrades and have
not had this problem until Excel 2007. We've specified that our documents
should be saved as type "Excel 97-2003 Workbook" which is described as "fully
compatible with Excel 97-2003". It's obviously not fully compatible. I
first thought it might be a printer driver problem, but I'm getting the same
results on 2 diferent printers. Is there possibly some setting we're missing
in 2007? Or is 2007 just doing scaling differently than 2003, and we have to
live with it?

Mary

 

[Jon Peltier]

The only way to keep the document fully compatible with Excel 2003 is to
only use Excel 2003. Between Excel 97 and 2003, four versions of Excel, and
probably even one or two versions prior, there were only minor changes to
the appearance of your workbooks. There are a lot of changes, major and
minor, to Excel 2007, and a great many of them affect document appearance,
even when colors and cell dimensions are nominally the same. You are not
missing a setting. It just works differently.

- Jon

 

[Mary Fetsch]

Thanks a lot for your help with this.

The only way to keep the document fully compatible with Excel 2003 is to
only use Excel 2003. Between Excel 97 and 2003, four versions of Excel, and
probably even one or two versions prior, there were only minor changes to
the appearance of your workbooks. There are a lot of changes, major and
minor, to Excel 2007, and a great many of them affect document appearance,
even when colors and cell dimensions are nominally the same. You are not
missing a setting. It just works differently.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. - http://PeltierTech.com
_______

 

[Jon Peltier]

I wish I had a better answer.

- Jon

 

[Mary Fetsch]

I spoke to the user who's having this problem, and she pointed out to me that
when she clicks the Page Layout tab, Page Setup, and then Print Preview, her
document looks fine. This is the print preview she's used to using. However
when she prints the document, it prints differently. (She's since noticed
that when she clicks Print Preview on the Printer screen or from the
Microsoft Office Button menu, it shows the way it prints correctly.)

The user is asking why have the preview in the page setup area if it isn't
correct. I couldn't answer except to say that I felt it was related to
scaling issues and converting from 2003 to 2007 - that if she had a document
created in 2007 I didn't think she would have that issue.

Any idea why print preview in one area shows things differently than in the
other area?

 

[Jon Peltier]

It should look the same. I don't know why it doesn't, but I'm not too
surprised. When a program undergoes so many changes, there are bound to be
some things that take a while to fix up.

- Jon

 

[PJ]

We have a somewhat similar problem. A group of clients run a model simulation
with the output in Excel. When printing from 2003, each data group for a 45
year period, prints to a single page. In 2007 with an identical print setup
(font, point size, margins, header and footer), the software chops off two
lines then prints each pair of lines on a separte page - using the same
printer. Using a ruler, the difference is slightly more than a quarter inch
for the rows (2007 takes up more space). Each group of 5 years is 0.625" for
Office 2003 and 0.65+" for Office 2007. The horizontal spread is just about
the same. Any ideas.

 

[Jon Peltier]

You may try changing the row height so at least the printout is right.

- Jon

 

[PJ]

Thanks, Jon
We changed the "scale" from 73% to 71% and now each group of 45 years fits
on a single page, but I think this is something for MS to check. Office 2007
removed the ability to open old Lotus files, moved things (tools) around
quite a bit and now there is the scaling problem.

 

[Doug Keith]

Hi there --

I'm having a similar compability problem with cell colors. I hear what
you're saying about the programs being "different," but clients want the
colors they've always had in long-used documents. Can my client contact you
directly so you can explain the differences and why they can't be fixed?

Sorry for the mild sarcasm, but basic things like colors matter to people
and should be backward compatible. I wouldn't expect the more complicated
improvements do work in older programs, of course. But maybe you could add a
"2003 color palette" to the 2007 program, for instance. There must be some
relatively simple fixes for issues like this.

Thanks.

Doug Keith