Excel printing and display scaling bug

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.)

Good explanation, "Yu can't get thar from here!", however for a company the size of Microsoft, not very acceptable. One of the reasons for scaling is recognizing not all humans have the same physical characteristics, and being able to see small print vs. big print falls into the category of accessibility. Having modern day billion dollar software that cannot print in sync with visual scaling is poor, and below Microsoft's benchmark. Its like saying we can't figure out how to have a wheel chair accessible washroom in an office building.

Disappointing that this is the answer provided by a blue chip company like Microsoft.

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.)

Matthew,

Congrats on your patience. I've never run into this problem, until recently, we've always had our workstations at 100% with no need to change scaling, but with VPNs, and advancing technology and better monitors at home, we've found the need to scale our workstations sometimes to 125% when connecting through remote desktops, etc... Well, let's just say, this caused some messes now, and our main accounting computer that prints checks, and reports from Microsoft Dynamics NAV (yea, it's not Excel, but still a Microsoft product) will only print correctly if the computer is left in 125% scaling. Anytime we scale the display back to the normal 100% it actually makes the print job larger, and prints off the page, which, when trying to print checks, is not good when things prints off the check!

We figured we just messed something up and confused Windows from remote desktop, multiple display settings and scaling issues, etc.. etc.. Sad to see this has been a nearly a 2 year battle with no real updates.

The workstation in question is a basic HP with built in Intel onboard graphics running Win 10 Pro. Using nothing but Windows and Microsoft products.

You have too many columns and too much white space.  Reduce column widths to remove excess white space.  Reduce column widths and wrap text (Item Name, Item Contents, Campaign Items needed).  Doing that, you might get it to print out on 11x17 paper and have it still readable.  Maybe need to hide some less important columns.

Also, check your default page size and scaling factors.  Page 1 just doesn't look like 8½x11 paper.

I've used excel for the better part of 20 years.  I cannot figure out why I cannot scale this spreadsheet to fit AND BE READABLE once printed.  It's printing too tiny to read, and dragging page breaks, setting scaling, and trying all of the other things mentioned here, are not working  can anyone help??  I just want 1 or 2 pages, readable, and with all columns visible. 

Thank you! 

This isn't what this post is about.  This is about display scaling changing how something prints.  I will say, I'm not sure if I misunderstood you, but I don't see how it is possible to print that with all columns visible AND have it readable.  Just look at the picture, have you ever seen a piece of paper that shape? You need less columns or a longer piece of paper.  You should make a separate post and ask this question if you still need help.