This issue has been going on with Excel for many years, but it is seriously time for Microsoft to fix it. We are now into Excel 2013 and it is STILL a problem! The issue is that when you place an image in an Excel spreadsheet and then print it (or even print preview it) then it appears squashed. While the width stays the same, the height gets shorter thus changing the ratio of the image. I have this issue on any computer, using any printer. The issue does not happen in Word, only in Excel. Microsoft it's time to get off the pot and fix this issue!

Hi Warren,

Thanks for the post, I've also noticed this behavior. And I am trying to involve someone to further look at this issue.

For now, a probable workaround might be scale the image to 110% before we print the

Hi Warren and Max,

I'll follow up and see that this is filed again. I can't guarantee a fix, but I can guarantee to bring it in front of the developer group.

Regards,
Anita

Hi Warren,

On further investigation, I found a report of this issue and a good explanation of why it has not been fixed, and how fixing it would cause other, more serious issues. I'm afraid we won't be able to address it.

Regards,
Anita Oakley

Hi Anita,

"Just live with it" is not an acceptable answer. It might help if you shared this new information you uncovered, but more than likely not. This is a very basic piece of functionality that needs to be fixed. Someone needs to put their big boy pants on and tackle this problem head on. It is simply not acceptable that it is still not fixed since Excel 2000 days. Come up with an official workaround or something, but it needs to be resolved one way or another. I am not prepared to live with an answer of "it cannot be done" as that is simply not true.

Thanks for your efforts,
Warren

Hi Max,

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately it is not always feasible as I have an image set in the header of my Excel spreadsheets. We use this to create quotes and to make sure that our company logo is in the exact same position on every sheet. I do not know of a way to change the scaling of an image that is in a header - do you know if that can be done?

Thanks,
Warren

Hi Max,

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately it is not always feasible as I have an image set in the header of my Excel spreadsheets. We use this to create quotes and to make sure that our company logo is in the exact same position on every sheet. I do not know of a way to change the scaling of an image that is in a header - do you know if that can be done?

Thanks,
Warren

Yes, it could be done.

When editing the header, with the HEADER & FOOTER TOOLS tab actived, click the Format Picture button beside the Picture button, there we can scale the picture in the header.

Cool, thanks for that tip. I will try this out and see how it works for this situation. I was used to managing the custom headers by going through Print Preview to the Page Setup dialog that does not provide these options. I appreciate your workaround. Hopefully now Microsoft will actually fix the problem?!

Anita, what is the latest on this issue? Has it been addressed yet? Still waiting for someone to explain why this is still an issue after more than 10 years.

Warren,

I have had many problems with graphics in Excel, different problems occur depending on View, default printer (even the same printer with PS and non-generic PCL) and image format. It may be worth experimenting with some of these to see if it makes a difference, especially the image format type between vector and scalar. Metafile formats in particular can cause/fix a problem.

Maybe Anita knows if any of this will help or be a watse of time?

Hello,

I have resolved this issue using snap to grid for my graphics (2003 version). I do not know how, but it somehow recalculate size of image or something. After you resize your image to grid, you can switch off snap to grid and move and resize your image as you want it will work.

Regards
Jozef.

I have many pictures in my Excel spreadsheet and have been frustrated as the pictures would distort when I previewed and also when I saved as PDF. I resolved this issue in Excel 2007 by right-clicking on each and every picture in my excel sheet, click Size and Properties, Properties Tab, click 'Move and Size with cells', close. This is a lot of work since I have so many picutures, but I am SO glad to have found this work-around as this is how I share my product price sheet WITH pictures with my customers. The snap to grid idea above is what gave me the idea. I couldn't find that option. If that is a way to do ALL pictures at once, please advise how to get there in Excel 2007. Thank you!

When considering the size of the work-around to fix this in the software programming, please consider how much time users spend trying to work around these problems on their own (collectively 10,000+ hours I am sure) vs. how much time it takes the development team to fix the issue (1,000's of hours?). We are all paying for this product, and it is a BASIC piece of functionality (especially from someone like myself using Adobe products on a daily basis). As an employer, it also costs money to pay employees to work around these problems.