copy XL chart & paste as picture bug

[stuck]

Unfortunately the source XL workbook and destination Word doc that I will talk about below contain commercially sensitive info so I can't post them and stripping them down makes the problem go away...

I have an XL 2007 workbook that creates a histogram. The left hand end columns are negative values, -4 is the lowest. The right hand column of the histogram is so huge compared to the others I have truncated the vertical axis at +10.

I do not want to link to the source file from Word and ultimately I will 'print' the Word doc to PDF. Experience shows the best quality 'print' of the chart is obtained if it is pasted Word, via Paste Special | Picture (enhanced metafile).

When I do this the histogram looks fine on screen, the left hand column extends down to -4, the extreme right hand column is vertical and truncated at +10.

BUT when I hard copy print (or PDF) this final right hand column is inverted, i.e. it descends from the x-axis and is truncated at -4.

I can work around this bizarre effect by temporarily hacking the source workbook to make the extreme right hand column actually stop at +10, rather than being just formatted to display only as far as +10, meanwhile any ideas about what is going on?

Ken

[stuck]

I've been able to create a dummy XL workbook that contains an example histogram that behaves as I describe above when used as a source doc for Word 2007.

Open it with XL 2007, copy the chart, switch to Word 2007 and on a blank landscape page, Paste Special, Picture (enhanced metafile). The chart should look fine on screen in XL and in Word. Print the Word version and see what happens to the last bar on the right hand end.



Ken

[StuartR]

I opened your spreadsheet with Excel 2010, copied the chart, paste special as an enhanced metafile into Word 2010, printed to Acrobat 9 and it came out correctly.
I then repeated this exercise on a PC running Office 2007 and Acrobat 9 and it also worked fine.

[HansV]

When I use the built-in Save As > PDF option in Word, the chart in the resulting PDF file looks exactly like the one in the Word document and in the Excel workbook...

[stuck]

This morning I too can't get it to fail when printing to PDF but it does still go wrong if I print a hard copy. Have either of you tried to look at what you get on paper?

Ken

[StuartR]

I have just printed this to my HP Officejet Pro 8500 from Word 2010 on Vista and it came out fine.

[HansV]

No, I didn't actually print it to paper. Print Preview looked OK though.

[stuck]

again
Yes, print preview looks OK to me too but the print itself is wrong.

I'm using a XP3, Office 2007 (fully patched) and printing across a network to an HP 4650 DTN colour Laserjet. It doesn't matter if the docs are sited on a network drive or my local C: drive.

I'll see if I can scan a hard copy so you can see the output I get.

Ken

[StuartR]

Do you have a different printer you could try?
Have you checked to see if your printer driver is up to date?

[stuck]

Ah ha! Printer drivers, that might be part of the explanation...

I can reproduce the problem on a Laserjet 1200 series but NOT on a Laserjet 1320 nor on a Laserjet 4500.

However, I still think Word 2007 contributes to the issue somewhere along the line because the problem has never come up before in years and years of using Word 2000.

Ken

[StuartR]

The drivers that are specific to your printer haven't been updated since 31 May 2007, but the most recent "Universal Print Driver" on this page is dated 18 Feb 2011, so it might be worth downloading and seeing if it helps.

[stuck]

Thank you Stuart but unfortunately I am a mere mortal and don't have access to the print server so I can't update the driver. I will ask the IT gods upstairs about this but I won't hold my breath.

Ken

[DaveA]

Sounds like the printer is set for reverse printing or the settings within the user's computer is set that way.

Do this happen to all other users computers or just this one?

[stuck]

The problem occurs on all PCs in the office.

The printers are not set for reverse printing but my understanding of that feature is that it is about the order in which the pages are printed not the way a chart on a page is outputted. Also, this problem occurs even if the doc is a single page doc.

The two scans below illustrate how the histogram prints
1) correctly on two of the printers
2) incorrectly on the other two

Ken
PS Oooo I get another star as this is my 600th post