Microsoft KB Archive/96255

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XL: Document Displayed/Printed in Unreadable, Compressed Print

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The information in this article applies to:


 * Microsoft Excel for Windows, versions 4.0, 4.0a
 * Microsoft Excel for the Macintosh, version 4.0

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SYMPTOMS
In Microsoft Excel, if the print area of your document contains 592 or more rows and if the Fit To option (under Scaling in the Page Setup dialog box) is set to a number of Pages Wide By to reduce the page width, your worksheet may be scaled down 10-percent and the document will be printed and displayed in print preview as a few pages of unreadable, compressed print. This scaling problem occurs if you specify a number of pages Tall in the Fit To option.

STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the versions of Microsoft Excel listed above. This problem does not occur in later versions of Microsoft Excel for Windows.

MORE INFORMATION
In the Page Setup dialog box, under Scaling, you have two available options:

  Reduce/Enlarge To - this option allows you to specify a percentage for reducing or enlarging a document.

  -and-

  Fit To - this option allows you to compress your document to fit on   a specified number of pages. For example, if the range you are printing is 4 pages wide when the scaling is 100-percent and it  contains 600 rows, setting the Fit To option to 3 Pages Wide By 30 Tall will cause the whole sheet to be scaled 10-percent. This occurs even though at 100-percent scaling the 600 rows easily fit on fewer than 30 pages.

WORKAROUND
To work around this problem, do one of the following:

 If you don't need to reduce your document lengthwise, leave the number of pages Tall box blank in the Fit To option.

-or- If you need to reduce the width AND the length of your document, use the Reduce/Enlarge To option rather than the Fit To option. Since Reduce/Enlarge To requires you to type a specific number, you may need to experiment to determine the percentage by which you need to reduce all of your columns and rows so that they will fit onto the desired number of pages. To experiment with different percentages, do the following:

 From the File menu, choose Print Preview. In print preview, choose the Setup button to open the Page Setup dialog box. Under Scaling, type the percentage by which you want to reduce your document. For example, if you want the document to be 25-percent smaller than normal, type &quot;75&quot; (without the quotation marks) in the Reduce/Enlarge To box. Choose the OK button to return to the Print Preview screen.</ol>

To increase or decrease the percentage by which you want to increase or decrease your document, repeat steps 2-4.</li></ul>