Cant print an excel sheet unless I copy the contents to a new sheet.

If I try to print the sheet straight from opening the file it only prints a couple marks on the page and nothing else. At most I get the grid lines If I copy the contents of the sheet to a new sheet and then print it prints fine. I don't even need to save the file 1st. But with that said, I can copy the contents to the new sheet, save it and then that sheet will print correctly without copying and pasting. The original files all printed fine from another location same version of office. It seems to be a formatting issue but it is an xls file before and after the copy paste. There are too many files to go through them all to fix this issue that way. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Windows Server 2008 RDP environment

Excel 2013 inside the RDP session

Thanks

-Kevin

Hi there,

Is it possible that the range specified by the Print Area setting (see the Page Layout tab) for the original worksheet does not contain the values you wish to print?

Hope this helps - please let me know how you get on.

Regards,

Greg M

Thanks for the response. I can understand how that could be the problem. But if that is the case, it would apply to every file I have and that's thousands. The issue applies to all my xls(x) files that I try to print on this particular station. The same files on other stations print fine without changing any parameters. Also at this station the issue is not printer related as it happens on 2 different brands/model printers. The only fix that we have discovered, is to copy the contents of the sheet, then past into a new one. That prints correctly every time without changing the print area.

Hi again,

Thanks for your feedback.

It would be very hard for me to suggest a proper solution without knowing the details of your setup, but perhaps I could offer a possible workaround?

Because of the thousands of workbooks involved it would be impractical to propose a workbook-level approach, so the workaround should operate at the application level. It should be quite straightforward to write a macro which would copy the required information to a new worksheet, print that worksheet, and then delete that worksheet. This macro could be stored in the Personal Macro Workbook and accessed via a button on the Quick Access Toolbar or on the AddIns tab.

If the name of the "problem computer" is unique, this could be used to ensure that the above macro is enabled only on that computer. Also, if the names of the workbooks to be printed using this approach have some distinguishing feature, this could be used to prevent the above macro from being used to print other workbooks.

Let me know if you think I can help with the above approach.

Regards,

Greg M

Thanks for the suggestion. The way we are using Excel is across multiple servers that keep the RDP profiles synced. Im unsure how a Macro will affect all users vs current user. We are gearing up for a big change and the coming changes will get rid of the need for RDP and I believe the issue will go away when that happens. I was hoping to find an answer like a hidden switch/option that I may be missing to solve this. But I think this may be the strangest issue I have ever had to try and resolve.

Hi again,

Ok on that - thanks for the further feedback.

Just for information, the macro I suggested using would be included in the Personal Macro Workbook of those Users who would be required to print the worksheet.

Regards,

Greg M