Print Preview is not consistent

[DavidJ726]

Hi All,

I have several multi-tabbed (Excel 2013) worksheets that are nearly identical in nature, each one is used for tracking a unique project.

The problem I'm experiencing (and it's more of an annoyance) is that the Print Preview and Print button in the QAT doesn't always show the Print Preview for the worksheet. On tab 1 for example, I'll click the Print Preview button, and I get the print preview as expected. However, on other tabs when I click the button, where the preview should be displayed, I get an icon that says Show Print Preview with a magnifying glass above it. When I click that I get the document preview.

I've looked at everything I can think of to see what's different about these worksheets, but I just can't see anything. Even the size and structure of the worksheet is similar.

I'm working on a HP EliteBook 850 with an Intel i& and 8G of Ram, so I don't think system resources is to blame.

I'm stumped. Any ideas?

Thanks,
David

[Kevin#]

Bit of an odd one!
If you are familiar with VBA, put this code in a general module, give it a shortcut (to make it easy to run from any sheet) and try it out when the button misbehaves and lets see what happens. If it works, then you have a workaround, and if it does the same thing, then we know a little bit more.

Sub Preview
activesheet.PrintPreview
End sub

[Kevin#]

There are lots of things that can cause a problem with print preview, and many are rather obscure. A few ideas, based on nothing but previous headaches:

1 Open the workbook on a different machine running 2013 - does it behave differently?
2 Also try a different version of Excel
3 Are you opening the file via Excel or from Explorer - I remember having occasional crashes occur in print preview (only in one file) and it took me ages to realise that it only happened if I opened the file via Explorer - still no idea why!
4 Was the file created on that PC?
5 Was it created in Excel 2013?

The inconsistencies suggest Excel is having difficulties opening Print Preview - but only in certain tabs - so there is something different about those tabs. Perhaps created in different versions of Excel? Is there a missing font?

What happens if you create a new tab and hit Print Preview?
- if new tab works ok, then may be quicker just to copy the problem sheets and paste to new ones and set up printing afresh
(depends on whether linked to other sheets etc)

[DavidJ726]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the response(s)!

Other than having a vague idea of what VBA is, I have no familiarity with it. However, I did some searching and I believe I've been successful in adding a macro that needs to be ran from the developer tab, correct? Anyway, I had to save the spreadsheet as a macro enable *.xlsm file first. With that said, the module does work, although it's in a different type of preview screen than how the preview is generally presented.

As far as the other questions-
1) I'm working from home for the next two days, so it'll be Monday before I get a chance to try a different PC at work with 2013.
2) When opening it in Office 365 on my home PC with Windows 10, I get the same results. One tab shows print preview as expected, the other tab requires the 2nd click on the icon in the preview window.
3) Both, same results.
4) No, tabs that I created were added, or copied from another Workbook, but the original spreadsheet was created on someone else's PC.
5) No.

In regards to questions # 5 & 6 above. I have several files, most of them are duplicates that were "Saved As" with a different file name, and then modified to suit that particular project. Not all files that were "Saved As" exhibit this behavior. And finally, I created a new document to mimic the old one, and print preview works as expected in all tabs.

So... while this issue is an annoyance, it's one I guess I'll have to live with for the time being. I was hoping there was a simple solution under my nose that I wasn't seeing, but I don't think it's worth anyone's time to figure it out. And since this phase of the project is about to end, I'll continue building the new "template" I created today, add in the formulas, and be content! :-)

Again, I appreciate your help, and the VBA solution did work. Unfortunately I'd have to create it for multiple workbooks, and it's probably not necessary now.

David