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Excel Page Breaks Change Upon Saving as PDF

Anonymous
2021-11-10T14:15:36+00:00

Hello all,

I'm looking to help streamline a process at my job - we create documents in excel and export them as PDFs. Now, the system we use at the job utilizes Excel 97-2003 worksheets (which I'm suspicious might be related to the issue, but hopefully not seeing as I can't change what we use).

So here's an example of what occurs - we have a list of locations. When in Excel, I construct these "schedules" in Page Break Preview so I can see where the dashed line is before exporting to a PDF. I'll save as a PDF, and before I even go to see what the PDF looks like, the page breaks often automatically have changed. I'll go through the schedule to find hard page breaks (solid blue lines) a few rows below the dotted natural page breaks that originally were there, and I'll have to do the following:

  • Adjust first hard page break that was created by me saving as PDF and move it back to where the dotted line was
  • Save as PDF
  • Go to the next hard page break that was created, move it back to where the 2nd dotted line was
  • Rinse, repeat

I can't even move them all back to where the belong at the same time all in one go because each time I save it, the previous hard page break I moved back to the dotted line will cause the rest to change to different spots upon saving so I have to adjust each one at a time, save as PDF, then continue.

This creates a massive inefficiency in my workplace when doing this process. I hope my explanation was enough to visualize the issue but, if not, I'd be more than happy to try and replicate the issue in non-work document.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For business | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-11-16T18:06:53+00:00

    Hi Mia,

    Thanks for the response. Currently fiddling with the way it saves as PDF and think I may have found the issue. Using the PRINT function to Print to PDF rather than Saving as PDF seems promising and so far has maintained formatting as it appears in Excel.

    Will update.

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-11-13T10:23:36+00:00

    Hi,

    Feel free to let me know the updates and further check the issue.

    Best Regards,

    Mia

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-11-12T10:45:04+00:00

    Hi,

    Based on my tests, it seems like the dotted page break shows preview in a correct way as it is same as the exported PDF.

    Hence, to further locate the issue, kindly check the following details.

    1.If the same issue will happen when you create new a workbook with sample data. This will help us to see if the issue is only related to some specific files.

    2.Test in xlsx. also to see if the issue only happens when comes to xls. files.

    3.May I know the detailed way to save as PDF so that we can perform a more similar test environment for you to see if the same issue will happen on our side. Also, test with various PDF exporters like Andreas suggested to see if it will make a difference.

    Hope a nice day for you!

    Best Regards,

    Mia

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-11-10T15:07:48+00:00

    Thank you Andreas, I will try that out.

    I forgot the mention something very important that might be the root of the issue. If I save as PDF and let's say the page breaks don't move (sometimes they don't) the issue is I might have 35 locations on page 1 in Excel before the dotted page break, but in the PDF there will only something like 32 locations. This will trickle down and ultimately there will be 20 pages in the PDF while only 18 in Excel. This is where I start changing the page breaks and running into issues. Would your suggestion solve this issue? All I want is for what I see in excel to be what I'll end up seeing on the PDF.

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  4. Andreas Killer 144.1K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2021-11-10T14:31:35+00:00

    When you print or export a sheet as fixed format, the output is always scaled.

    So if the output devices have different sizes and/or resolutions, you get different results.

    The Page Break Preview uses the default printer to scale the output.

    This issues happens if the scaling is set to 100% and you don't leave enough margin.

    Install a PDF Printer and set it as default, then print the sheet to PDF. That works best in most cases.

    Andreas.

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