Excel 2010 crashes when using print preview button and adding headers/footers

Anonymous
2010-12-19T00:28:04+00:00

I am using Office 2010 Professional with Windows 7.  The installation was successful and I have no other issues with any Office programs except Excel 2010.  Whenever I use the print preview button on the Quick Access Toolbar to check the print preview before printing, or use headers/footers to add these before printing, Excel crashes and forces a restart when I next go to save the document.  It may allow me to do up to 3 print previews before I go to save the document and it crashes and attempts to recover the data or just shuts Excel down after a few times.

All other Office program functions work fine and I have checked my printer driver with a Microsoft utility and it reports no issues.

Can anyone help?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-11-30T21:09:43+00:00

    I am having the same problem. I keep forgetting to save  before print preview and the system crashes. I am using XP so the problem must be with Excel 2010 (I am really hateing it)

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-01-16T19:17:08+00:00

    The same problem is happening to me now. I haven't done any changes for hardware and software on my laptop to create this. It just happened while I was working on a file. I've done a reboot, safe reboot and they don't help at all.

    What is really happening is Excel is crawling. It may be slow enough depending on your system that you either get a no response dialog from the OS or it crashes. On mine, it takes forever for it to execute a function. This could be as simple as selecting a cell. Memory usage reports normal, CPU usage reports normal.

    Starting Excel clean, changing your printer if you can (mine is default to PDF creator), and then open your file. This seems to be the only solution to me, which is rather very annoying and cumbersome. PDF creator has not been updated and was just working prior to this crashing.

    I hope MS has a solution as it appears they have given up on this thread entirely. I have little hope on this community and I advise others to not depend on it as well. I have several critical and severe issues that they have not even address and/or follow up on. I'm talking about severe and critical so I'm not sure why they don't think it's important enough. Good luck everyone, going open source soon in my case.

    Edit: Did a few more testing and the it still crashing although not as often. This is with switching printers around prior to opening the file to work on. When Excel starts behaving in this manner it does actually chew up 80% of the CPU time. This probably explains why it is crawling at a snails pace. Utilization won't return until it has recover and in one of my test it did actually recover by itself without having to close or do anything. Still not sure why it just now starting acting up.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-01-19T07:11:48+00:00

    Is your computer connected to a network or domain?

    Do you face the similar issue with other Office applications?

    Does the file contain any macros?

    Try disabling all the add-ins from Excel and check what happens.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-01-21T22:37:58+00:00

    Is your computer connected to a network or domain?

    Do you face the similar issue with other Office applications?

    Does the file contain any macros?

    Try disabling all the add-ins from Excel and check what happens.

    1. This started happening on my home PC although it has happened at work as well but with a different file and using skydrive. See my other issues. I think the two are related as they both take forever to process a function, such as selecting a cell.
    2. Only encounter this behavior in Excel files, and these are basic spreadsheets with no macros and basic formulas such as sum. I use Powerpoint, Word (alot), Visio, Access and have not had it happened. It is Excel only in my case.
    3. File is basic with no macros; just a basic record spreadsheet that is updated daily.
    4. Add-in's disabled and still no go. I know that Avast causes issues and I have inform them and they are aware of the problem but it is an entirely different issue. With Avast, the program cease to work and crashes often.

    Since it is happening on a specific file could it be that the file is somehow corrupted although it may appear to be ok? I can open more complex spreadsheets and they don't have the issue. Any, just food for thought.

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-04-03T09:22:43+00:00

    Just to add my two-penneth.

    I have the same problem with one of my clients, this time Excel is running on a Windows Server 2008 platform.

    Excel would crash after 3 or 4 times after a visit to the Print Preview.

    1. Changing default printer has no effect, that eliminates the printer.
    2. Running the same workbooks on my own PC with Excel 2010 works fine, that eliminates the workbooks.

    This then only leaves the environment and maybe some Excel settings, but what? I do not know, and nor does it appear that Microsoft know.

    I have many other clients running the exact same workbooks with exactly the same Excel 2010 software also on Windows Server 2008 platform and they work fine...how do solve that!

    I would upgrade my client to Excel 2013 to solve the problem, but unfortunately I know that they would then inherit infinity more problems.

    If anyone found the magic bullet for this since the last post a year ago I would love to hear...

    Regards

    Steve

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