Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

Register Log in
  • Congratulations cowski on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Gridlines print over cell contents

Status
Not open for further replies.
krd

krd

New member
Joined
Nov 10, 1999
Messages
43
Location
CA
When I print some, but not all, Excel files the row gridlines get out of sync with the row contents so that halfway down the page the gridlines are running thru the row text. This is using page setup-sheet-gridlines. This does not show up on print preview. It happens regardless of which printer in the office I use.

It does not happen when another computer prints the same file.

Anybody know where the magic switch to fix this problem is?


 
Sort by date Sort by votes
It sounds like you're typing more text than the column can hold.

You have two choices:
> Turn on word wrap on the Alignment tab in Format
> Merge the cells you're overlapping with text to the cell containing the text

TTFN
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Sorry, one more, you could always just make the column wider.

TTFN
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks IRstuff - but the problem is with the row lines, not column lines. It's as though a 12 pt font is being printed in a 10 pt row. At the top of the page the font fits in the row. Gradually as you go down the page the font prints a little higher unitl, by halfway down the page, the font is printing between two rows. So the row grid line strikes thru the font. Next page same thing.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Did you select the entire sheet and try Format|Row|Autofit?

TTFN
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
did you prepare the spreadsheet?

how about disabling the print gridlines feature...

from main menu; file-page setup, select sheet tab and ensure print gridlines checkbox is not checked.

good luck!
-pmover
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Nope, I've tried every formating option I can find. No change. Large spread sheets need grid lines to be readable.
Maybe this is a file corruption issue.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Are all the printers in your office the same printer manufacturer. I am tempted to say the printer driver has a problem. Download the current driver for your printer. If all your printers are HP then you are probably using the same driver for all your printers.

Take a look at your row height settings where the grid starts going through the text. Look at the cells around where the change occurs. Do you have some special characters inbedded inside of a cell. There may be a cell trying to print printer control characters thus changing the printer settings.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
adding to what the previous post said - this reminds me of these "good old days" where the printers all had their built-in, hardwired fonts. To overcome this, someone invented the WYSIWYG feature and called it "Windows" (just kidding ...) ;)

Could it be that the printer driver is configured to use these printer fonts? If this is true, maybe you can set it to "send all fonts as grafics" (or similar) ?

Btw pls excuse my English, I come from Germany

Michael Marx
Electrical and Control Engineer
VOITH Paper - Euskirchen, Germany
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thank you for your time.
We have networked computers going to network printers. This problem is isolated to a few computers printing some, but not all files.
I now find I can print a spread sheet on 11 x 17 paper OK but when I print to 8 1/2 x 11 paper the row grid lines print over the rows.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Your last post is interesting, but lacks detail. Is the problem in the computer or in the printer? Are you sure that the computers have the most current drivers? I think that even if you and IT are "sure," you should refresh all the drivers.

Despite what your IT guys might say, keep pressing them. Often, they do things that they think will have no effect, yet can often create odd symptoms. We've havd problems with a double-sided capable printer that would suddenly stop printing double-sided or would suddenly have the double-sided option turned off. In both cases, continual nagging would invariable result in, "Oh yeah, I had to change something..."

TTFN
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yes indeed, "Is the problem in the computer or the printer.." is what I'm hoping someone can shed some light on.

A file I made on this computer months ago printed OK on printer #1 then and prints OK on printer #1 today.

A file I just made on this same computer does not print OK on printer #1 today. Viewing on Print Preview, using 8 1/2 x 11 paper and row and column headings showing, I see a page with 51 rows and 51 lines of text each centered in a row. Great. But when the page prints there are 51 lines of text printed in 50 rows with the row lines gradually striking thru the text until at the bottom of the page the 51st row is empty.

If I print this same page on 11 x 17 the landscape way, the 51 lines of text print inside the 51 rows. Well there is a slight shift up - the text is centered in line 1 but by line 51 the text looks like it is aligned with the top of the row.

We think we have downloaded the latest HP printer drivers. But does this sound like a computer (file) problem or printer problem?

Thanks in advance.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Have you run "Detect and Repair" on the Help Menu?

Did any changes occur on the computer in the intervening months between when the file that does work was created and now?

Can you "Save As" the working file into a new file and does it work?

TTFN
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Just jumping in with a few thoughts.

We get a number of "odd" problems in various software apps which seem to defy logic. My most frequent approach is to assume that the computer in question is suffering from either memory leakage or hard disk overload.

In the m-l scenario, everything you did today leaves something in RAM which eventually clogs up and causes an interference at a critical address, which shows up in either the screen redraw or the printer buffer (which are probably low in the useage heierarchy.

In the h-d-o scenario, all the temporary files which you write to the hd every time you flip out of a screen or window, eventually interfere with the processor's ability to find a big enough contiguous block to reserve for the next command, which again may be a screen redraw or print spooling.

In the majority of cases the rule is "save frequently and always be prepared to reboot". That way you will avoid, or at least work out of many of the sillier problems.

When we find something which, reliably will not work on one computer but will work on another, upgrading the first to the memory size of the second is the most likely solution.

You can get downloadable memory managers like RAMIdle which will handle the day to day chores of cleaning out the memory leakage but they too sometimes cause the problem (due to address interferences?)

We have also had printing problems which cropped up on the way to a network plotter because of some sort of incompatibilities with the spooling capacity of the computer, the intermediate server, the router and the plotter. We solved that by hard coupling the computer to the plotter for those files which didn't make it properly.

Funny things computers!!
Good luck [smile]
David
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

dik
  • Locked
  • Question Question
Convert Cell Types
Replies
10
Views
1K
dik
dik
MToomey
  • Locked
  • Question Question
Excel Formatting Spill-over
Replies
6
Views
464
pmover
pmover
dik
  • Locked
  • Question Question
Copying Cells
Replies
6
Views
966
dik
dik
skeletron
  • Locked
  • Question Question
Footers and Page Break boundaries with print-to-PDF
Replies
3
Views
385
3DDave
3DDave
electricpete
  • Locked
  • Question Question
an update to vba routine for highlighting the current cell
Replies
6
Views
473
skeletron
skeletron

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top