SpreadCE / Spread32

Greetings, & thanks again for Spread32-

I want to print only a highlighted cell-block, font-size reduced as necessary, and hopefully automatically, to fit the chosen paper size. I use a Canon 4600 printer under Win XP. I've tried selecting the landscape + fit-to-page options but the print-preview still shows multiple pages. Plus, a column is chopped off, seemingly, at the right side of the page. (I don't want to bother printing until the print-preview shows that it'll be OK.)

Print-preview responds to "landscape" all right, but not, seemingly, to "fit to page".

How can I a) print only either a highlighted cell-block reduced to one page or else, only the cell-block containing data, reduced to one page; and b) how can I prevent the chopping-off of a column at the right side of a page?

Hi Ken,

I know that I still have a fair amount of work to do concerning printing, such as Page Setup and Print Preview. I'll try and get these sorted out as soon as possible.

If you only want to print a selected area of the sheet, you can select the cells that you want printed, and then in the Print dialog box where it says "Page Range", tick "Selection".

The program will try to print the cells the same size on the page as they appear on the screen, so you may want to adjust the zoom percentage for the sheet. For example, size the screen to the width of a page, select the cells to be printed, then use the Format > Sheet > Zoom > Fit Selection menu option.

As an alternative to selecting the cells by using the keyboard or the mouse, you can use the Edit > Go To menu option and type in the range.

OK--that seems to work (almost) OK. But I notice this: when I repeatedly click on Format|sheet|zoom|fit selection, the view toggles between just the selection vs. the selection and a few more rows. And each time I go to that menu item, what's always checked is "Custom" rather than Fit Selection. Odd...

And another thing, that's a problem: You told me why this is before, but I've forgotten. Some of the cell $-items are replaced with ###. They look perfectly OK on-screen, but printed, they're ###.

And finally, a) the printing chops off a bit of the left-most characters in the left selected column, with the same true of the right-most column; and b) it would be nice to be able to included, in a print, the row/column designations.

KCH

1) (I haven't checked but) Format > Sheet > Zoom > Fit Selection may give slightly different results depending on the existing zoom setting, probably due to rounding in the calculation of the required zoom level.

2) After calculating the required zoom level, the program sets it as a "custom" zoom level. It can't retain it as "fit selection", because you might change the selection. This also allows you to see (and maybe fine-tune) the actual zoom value that has been chosen.

3) Numeric values in cells are replaced by # symbols when the column is not wide enough to display the full value. When you change the zoom level, the program has to pick a different font size to display the values. Because the fonts are not all available in every possible size, it might pick one which is slightly larger or slightly smaller than specified by the zoom level, and so you may see displayed values changing to or from # as you change the zoom level. This also applies when printing, as the program has to pick a printer font which may differ from the current display font. In general, the solution is to ensure that the columns are sufficiently wide, and you don't have any values which "only just fit" in the cell.

4) Losing the extreme left and right edges is probably a bug relating to the setting of the print margins. You should be able to work around this by including an extra column at each side, with a column width of something like 0.5.

5) There is not currently the option to print row and column headings. I will include this in the "Page Setup" part when I add it. Again, you could work around this by including an extra row at the top of your print area containing the headings that you want.

6) All things considered, you might want to set up a separate sheet in your file just for printing, that has:
- the required zoom level
- the required selection
- any left/right padding required
- any column headings required
- any row identifiers required
and uses formulas to pull in the actual data from the other sheet(s), like this:
=Sheet1!A1
=Sheet1!A2
=Sheet1!A3
etc.

Very good info, and I thank you again.

As to #3, tho- Those cells that had the ###s printed appeared to contain $-data that were well within the width-limits. Some had only 3 places with no decimal values e.g. 600 (maybe that's the cause?) and others had only a dash (again, the cause?). The spreadsheet was created by someone else so maybe the cell-criteria called for decimal values e.g. xx.xx and disallowed dashes. I'll bet those were the reasons. If so I'll have to pass the word to the guy. Altho, maybe he was using Excel and maybe it's OK there...?

KCH

No!...belay the last post! The $-values all were entered as xx.xx, with only an occasional dash. Those ###s appear only when I select format|sheet|zoom|fit selection. The screen remains OK then but the print preview shows the ###s.

KCH

Can you e-mail me a copy of the spreadsheet file so that I can investigate the problem? Thanks.

I suspect I can't do that. It's a financial spreadsheet for my wife's church. I'm not into church myself so I couldn't care less--but I don't think they'd go for it. I'll ask my wife to ask the writer of it if he could supply, perhaps, an attenuated v. that still causes the problem.

KCH

1) Okay, forget what I said earlier about setting the zoom level before printing - zoom only affects the display, not the printing (with the exception that setting the zoom level to 50% or below causes numeric values to be printed as #, I will need to investigate that further).

2) If you are trying to print your example file on A4/Letter paper, then 100% should be just fine anyway, there is no need to zoom out to 35%. You can change the row heights, column widths and font sizes as necessary to get the layout that you want.

3) Using the Zoom > Fit Selection menu option does a ONE-TIME-ONLY recalculation of the zoom percentage; it doesn't cause the zoom percentage to automatically adjust thereafter every time that you do something such as resize the window or change the selection.

OK, thanks. But did you get my separate email of yesterday? In it I attached a v. of the xls file that I have printing problems with & also a screen-print jpeg showing that it looks OK on the screen.

KCH

Yes I did, thank you.
It shows the same problem on my Canon printer preview mode (I didn't try printing it for real), but only when the zoom percentage is set below 50%. This is strange as the zoom should only affect the display, not the printing. There must be a subtle bug somewhere. I'll find it and fix it.

OK!.. Such fun, chasing bugs...

KCH