Excel: Cell Contents Repeat When Printing But Not on Screen

If a cell in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet is formatted with Alignment set to Fill, it is possible that the repeating characters may only be viewed when printing or previewing the document. The cell appears without a repetition of its contents during normal viewing on the screen.

The opposite effect may also occur with the screen view showing repetition and the print preview and printout showing no repetition.

To eliminate the difference, widen the column slightly and the normal and print views will be the same.

More Information:

To format the alignment of a cell, choose Alignment from the Format menu and select the desired option. The Fill option repeats the contents of the cell until the cell is full. However, the text will not be duplicated in the cell if it cannot be duplicated in its entirety. For example, a cell can be filled with the string "testtesttest", but not with the string "testtestte".

The difference between printing and normal viewing occurs because of the differences in screen and printer fonts, which may not be exactly the same size. Even though the column width may be wide enough to force a fill of the printer font, it may not be wide enough to force a fill of the screen font, or vice versa. The difference is usually very slight.

Example

For example:

   Normal View:    text       Print Preview:   texttext

   Print Preview:  text       Normal View:     texttext

Solution

The solution is to adjust the column width slightly to compensate for the differences between printer and screen fonts.