Excel printing and display scaling bug

Hello Matt,

It pains me to see all of this microsoft is making you go through, I have the exact same issue on windows 10 and have sent them videos as well, they just dont want to admit they have a problem here, as they have yet to get back to me. This is a bug, fix it. Stop giving everyone the run around and admit it.

Unfortunately this bug will likely never be fixed. The way the size and display is calculated is too fundamental to how Excel works. It would require a complete rewrite. The code's too deep. "Ya can't get thar from here!" The only thing that works for sure is to require everyone in your organization to use 100% scaling. Obviously this is no good for those of us with bad eyesight and/or 4K monitors. Some workarounds I've come up with:

• Set your monitor to a lower resolution, like 1080p or lower. This looks like **** on a high DPI display, but at 100% scaling, printing will be correct.
• Buy a giant 42in. 1080p television and use this as your monitor. They don't manufacture these anymore, but they should be available second hand for the next several years.
• Sit closer to your 4K monitor. (Shut up, Mom! I have no other choice!)
• Buy eyeglasses.
• Do the whole "Set to 100%, sign out, sign in, print, set to 125%, sign out, sign in" rain dance every time you need to print or do pixel perfect formatting adjustments.
• Sign into Windows with your settings at 100%. Change to 125% and DO NOT sign out. This makes everything bigger but maintains the original draw distance between cells. However, you get blurry elements including dialog boxes. Again, what's the point of a high DPI display if my s***'s blurry?
  • Another version of this fix is to have two monitors, one at 100%, the other at 125%. This only works when the 100% monitor is set as your primary display. And surprise! You still get blurriness on the 125%. (I suspect messing around with a laptop dock has the same behavior, but I haven't tested it.)
• Leave it at 125% and just fiddle with the formatting until it prints like you want, or the universe ends, whichever comes first.

None of these solutions are ideal, but mark my words: Microsoft will not be fixing this bug this decade. Does anyone else have a hacky workaround?

(One parting thought. I tried it on two separate computers, with different graphics cards, and I fiddled with the graphics settings on each: Nothing. It doesn't have anything to do with graphics card settings. Prove me wrong.)

FYI .. I got a new work laptop with windows 10.  Still has the same problem. 

Hi Matthew,

I just wanted to comment and share that I am experiencing the same issue. This affects every computer in my office. It's rather frustrating because I create many templates in Excel for our staff to use. I usually have my display settings in windows at 125% to help with things being small due to my high resolution display. I cannot create templates while using the 125% setting, because the excel templates will end up printing differently for the users in the office who leave their display setting at 100%.

Microsoft, please address this issue.

Windows 7 Pro

Microsoft Office Version 1803 (Build 9126.2259 Click-to-Run)

Thanks,

Taylor

Hi Matt,

Apologize for the delay and thanks a lot for your supplement.

I have got your point that you mean the setting of scale in windows affects Excel printing while the setting should only change the display. Thus, you find you may select the Disable Display Scaling On High DPI Settings to fix it. However, you tried but with no avail.

I tested on our end in win7 and win10. On these two OS versions, scaling in windows won't affect Excel printing. Thus, whether I check or uncheck the Disable Display Scaling On High DPI Settings in win7((no such option for Excel in win10), there isn't influence and Excel prints normally.

Since we can't repro, to narrow down this behavior on your end, could you please try the following troubleshooting steps to see the outcome:

1. Please open Excel in safe mode to see the outcome.
2. Please perform a clean boot in Windows and then launch Excel to check whether it is related to some software conflicts.
3. If neither of the above suggestions work for you, please follow the steps in this support article to repair Office application.

Thanks a lot for your time and patience.

Best Regards,

Zixuan

I've done all three of these things with the same results.  I did the full "online" repair.

I understand the settings are totally different, but what I am telling you is that turning on display scaling in windows (see the first screenshot in my original reply) has changed how my file is printing in excel with absolutely no changes made to the excel file.  I only tried to disable display scaling (second screen shot above) because I was having the problem that is the subject of this post.  The fact that the disabling of display scaling in the excel shortcut is not working is a totally separate problem that I discovered while troubleshooting the printing issue.

My problem is that, it should appear the same when printed, and it does not.  When i turn on "display scaling" in windows, it is changing how the spreadsheet prints, and it should not.  There is nothing that I can do in excel using the "print scaling" to make it look correct.  These come from the exact same file, with no other changes made to the file.

I PM'd you PDFs.  I don't know how to explain this any better.  This needs to be reported to the developers.