Weird Excel vs Printer Issue

Okay, this one still has me stumped. I’ve a user who was printing an Excel 365 spreadsheet (xlsx), with the print area set for a certain number of columns of data formatted as a table, with Normal margins, and the layout such that it’d print centered on Letter sized paper, in landscape, and resized to fit 1 page wide by however many needed tall. The headers are set to repeat on each page ($1:$1). Done this a million times myself, without a hitch.

On this particular printer (a Kyocera ECOSYS 3145dn, a slightly upgraded version of my own 3045dn) with the KX drivers appropriate for the printer, the print preview shows everything will print normally. However, when printed, the right-most two columns will print without their contents, neither header of the column nor the data in the rows below. The headers are just ‘processed on’ and ‘ending’ and the columns just have dates in them, so not excessively wide, nor wrapped text.

The only hint at what is the problem comes from the fact that, if I increase the right-most margin from 1.8 cm, to 2 cm, to 3 cm, to 4 cm, and then to 5 cm, I discovered that at both 3 and 4 cm, the header for the second to last column will display (but not data in the rows), and at 5 cm, all the headers and content shows. At all margins, the columns themselves print. Remember, it’s formatted as a table so the shading and borders all show up on the paper.

If I switch it to Portrait mode, the entire document prints fine (all columns, headers, and content), even with Normal margins again.

None of what I tried to do to fix the problem has worked. As far as I’ve gotten is discovering that it’s related specifically to landscape mode and the right margin.

  • Print problem happens from multiple devices.

  • Reinstalling the printer, whether it’s from a share on the server or direct to the IP of the printer, makes no difference.

  • Settings are identical to my printer, and my printer prints the doc fine.

  • I can Print to PDF and the PDF has the columns, which will print on the printer okay (that’s the workaround we are using right now).

  • It’s not related to the Excel document. Taking old data from a year ago that printed fine on my printer, before the 3145dn printer was even purchased, has the same problem with column data not printing.

  • I’ve checked the scaling in printer settings and Excel settings (particularly the Options>Advanced>General>Scale content for A4 or 8.5 x 11" paper sizes one) to ensure the only item that should be managing any scaling is the page setup choice of “1 page wide by tall”.

  • My printer has a third cartridge that contains plain letter-sized paper, while she uses the multipurpose tray for her paper. To test if that was a problem, I printed to her cartridge #1, but that didn’t have any impact on the problem.

  • It’s not a font or colour problem (i.e. invisible text).

There were other random things I tried, like removing columns, moving them around in a different order, etc, but it always came down to that right-hand margin on the landscape page forcing the columns to print blank on this one printer. By the way, also prints fine on a multipurpose Ricoh workhorse that we have.

It’d be a different sort of thing if the entire area to the right wouldn’t print at all, as if it was cut off, but the fact it prints the columns without content is baffling. So…um, help? Anyone ever come across such an odd glitch?

Have you tried a different driver for the print device?

Print to a PDF or image and then print that?

Yep, mentioned I did the Print to PDF thing as a test (4th point) and it’s our workaround. Thanks for the suggestion, though. It was one of the last things I told her to do to get any future docs printed locally for her (although she can also print to the Ricoh).

I didn’t try a different driver, but I quite literally side-by-sided the preferences and properties of the printer with my printer settings (which are nearly 99% idential) to ensure I didn’t miss anything. The only other driver immediately available is a v4 PCL6 which seems to have very limited configurations available, but I could try that if I have no other option.

In excel, under print , page setup, sheet, is draft quality checked? It should not be checked if it is. :)

Thanks, no, that wasn’t it either.

I didn’t have much time for troubleshooting today and not much to go on, but I hunted down a different KX driver direct from the Kyocera site and installed it directly on my system (instead of on the server then deploying it from there). Windows thought it was the same driver as the one already installed but I said to install it anyway.

It corrected the issue right away, without any additional tweaks.

There must have been something wrong with the drivers I was installing, even if the ones I ended up with were the same as far as I can see. I have no idea why the glitch was so specific to Excel, to landscape mode, and to only not printing cell contents in a particular area of the page, but there you have it. At least I know all I have to do is use the drivers I downloaded today.

Thanks for the tips. I had a lot of fun troubleshooting this one, and that’s not sarcasm. If there’s one thing I love is a new mystery, but only when I’m not so busy that it stresses me out.

Whew! I was afraid you’d have to drill holes in your printer. Glad you got it fixed!