Print Excel to PDF doesn't print all information

[sxschech]

I have an excel (2003) file with 20 tabs. If I print to a printer each page prints fine. However, if I choose Adobe PDF as the printer, some pages don't print properly. When I do a Print Preview, as well as the resulting PDF file, it seems to render about 3/4 of the page and whatever is on that portion where it stops printing, is only half printed, so for example an A would only show up as a triangle, the legs wouldn't be printed. Even though no detail information displays, the page numbers, which are stored in the Footer, do display at the lower right corner of the page. This is not a case of having more data than will fit on a page as there are only 44 rows and the Page Setup is displaying at 100%. In experimenting, when I change to a lower number such as 90%, it displays more information due to the smaller size, but still stops printing when it gets to about 3/4 of the page, it too also prints the footer at the bottom of the page. When I switch back from Adobe PDF to the regular printer, print preview shows the page as it should look. Since it is not happening on all the pages, some pages have 50 or 60 rows and display fine in PDF, not sure what do to. We did another experiment and copied the data from one of the problem pages to a new Tab and pasted it, without the Formatting, it printed fine. By formatting, I mean adjusting some col. widths and bolding some cells and putting line borders around some cells. I would rather not have to redo all these sheets, if there is a suggestion.

 

[Lilliabeth]

I would try making Adobe pdf the default printer and after that set a print area on one of the worksheets.

--Lilliabeth

 

[etarhan]

Assuming that the printing and non-printing pages are all formatted in the same general manner, it looks like there are some invisible things on the non-printing sheets, such as adjustments or data in the adjoining cells. Only you have a chance of remembering what you may have done for such a result to be produced.

By the way, what are you using as the PDF printer driver? Adobe, or something else from the 'net? I would suggest downloading one of the many free PDF creators available for download, just to check and see.

Good luck,
Engin

 

[eyec]

pdfcreator over at

http://www.sourceforge

works quite nicely as a pdf print driver

 

[sxschech]

I stumbled into the solution, but first...

Lilliabeth, your suggestion is what I first tried before making my post. Sorry if my post wasn't clear, I first set the default printer to "ADOBE PDF" and that is how I encountered the problem. I later tried setting only the Printer in Excel itself, with the same results.

Engin, I am using the "Adobe PDF" from Adobe and have full version of Acrobat Professional 7.1.0

...
The solution. Sorry if a bit long winded, but explaining how I got to the result.
--------------
I started copying the data off the problem pages into new worksheets and since the data on the new sheets printed fine, went back to the problem sheets and started removing formatting, and even went so far as to copy the data into a plain text editor, deleting all the rows and then pasting back. No luck. So then I decided that since copying to a new sheet was working, I'd go that route. I started applying minor formating, adjusting row heights and col widths and then I noticed something in Page Setup that I hadn't paid attention to before...

On the page that I was editing, there is a box below Paper Size (Letter) called Print Quality. It turns out that for all the pages that weren't printing properly, this box was empty, the pages that printed fine had a value in there, in this case "600 dpi". Once I entered 600 dpi into the Print Quality box of the pages that weren't printing properly, all the information began showing up on Print Preview.