In Excel 2010, cannot get gridlines to print. The lines are visible in "print preview", but do not appear on the printed copy.

This is more of a work around and a quick fix rather than trying to discover what the real problem is. I simply add a period (.) in the last box of the page where the perforated lines show. Then when I print preview or print, the gridlines are all there. Yes, I end up with a small period at the bottom of my sheet, but it is much faster and less frustrating than redoing the sheet or trying to find another solution! Hope this helps!

I'm having trouble with this very basic problem of printing and displaying gridlines on spreadsheets using an HP Pavilion computer wit Windows 64 bit and a Brother laser printer. Excel 2010 has beaucoup bells and whistles and I cannot understand how this very basic fault has not been corrected in two years and is wasting so much of the users time. seems like the answer should be in the software not in klutzy work arounds. does it also occur in Office for Mac?

My experience in Excel 2010 is that the problem only occurs in documents that originated in xls format, whether currently in xlsx or xlsm, and the problem goes away if you delete Print_Titles.

PROBLEM:

Workbooks originally created in xls format, containing Print_Titles, do not print gridlines.

SOLUTION:

Open the problem workbook.

Page Layout, Page Setup, Sheet, check Print Gridlines, OK

File, Options, Advanced , Display Options For This Workup, Show Sheet Tabs

R-click the sheet tab, Move or Copy...., To book (new book), check Create copy, OK

Close the old book.

Save the new book, replace old.

Gridlines print in the new book. Simply copying and pasting a sheet to a new another sheet in the same book or a new book doesn't work.

In the 7 months since I wrote this there does not appear to have been any progress on this problem. While the above workaround works for me, it is tedious and it doesn't last. The new book soon exhibits the same problem. So I don't save the new book and I redo the above each time I want to print gridlines in an offending file. Bill, if you are reading this, is Microsoft doing anything about this?

Meanwhile, I have found a workaround that is simpler and does last. It involves changing one setting in printer properties:

In the Excel 2010 document, Print Preview and Print>Printer Properties>Advanced>Document Options>Print Optimizations: change setting to Disable. Save the file.

This works for my HP 1320 Laserjet printer. If it doesn't work for your printer, you might try changing your printer properties settings one at a time.

The only down side with this solution is that it must be done (only once) for each offending document. It is possible to make the same setting change globally (In Windows 7, Control Panel>Devices and Printers>Right-click the default printer driver>Printing Preferences). This does not change settings of existing documents, only newly created ones. Since new documents don't exhibit the gridline problem, for me this is a non-solution.

According to HP's knowledge base, "The Print Optimization feature is a Unidrv feature located on the Advanced tab of PCL6 drivers. By default, it is set to enabled, and a PCL6 driver handles text, vector, and raster data. When the feature is set to disabled, the PCL6 driver will switch into raster mode, and force all text and vector calls to be rasterized by GDI (Windows). This feature is useful in situations where text or vector calls are rendered incorrectly by the print driver, but the GDI rasterization process creates proper output.

Changing this setting to disabled will typically result in a performance hit causing print jobs to print slower than when the feature is enabled."

Not sure what this means. I have not noticed a performance hit, but it sounds like a good reason not to make the setting change global. I actually use the PCL5 driver. The system used by Windows and HP to automatically find and install a driver is so good I could not find a way to download and test the PCL6 driver for my 1320 printer.

I am becoming convinced that the gridline printing problem is fundamentally an Excel problem that manifests itself as a printer driver problem.