Excel table not printing correctly?

[neuri]

Hello,

 

I always use Excel to come up with my listings, recently, I started to notice a weird problem.

 

I would copy the excel table that I need, go to AutoCAD 2010 and use PASTESPEC , then choose AutoCAD entities. After I resize it and whatnot, I would then print it.

 

For some reason, the first row wouldn't print correctly. Sometimes the words get cut off or it doesn't show at all. If I were to move my drawing up to that portion of the paper, the drawing appears fine.

 

So that rules out a printer alignment issue, is it the excel table itself? Fonts and font color are standard across the table, so I'm baffled by this little problem.

 

edit: While I'm on this, can someone suggest a better way to copy an excel table into a CAD file? The method I use will end up having the table appearing as a small, miniscule table, I always have to drag it up to resize and change the font size etc. etc.

 

I'm guessing I have to set a default annotation scale for it?

[dbroada]

I can't answer your printing problem but for the second one, have you tried DATALINKing your table? You get genuine two way editing of the spread sheet if needed.

[neuri]

mm.. i wont need to edit it often though.

 

But this printing thing is weird as heck..

[dbroada]

I don't edit often either but I use it as I find it by far the easiest way to get an Excel sheet in to AutoCAD reliably.

 

How much data is in your table? OLE tables used to suffer from only being able to show a certain amount and would leave of bits if it felt it was too difficlut (I know that feeling). Is yours doing the same? Is the table displaying correctly and not printing or is it not displaying correctly either?

[neuri]

It displays perfectly , the text heights, alignment are all the same.

 

What's weird is that if I draw a tiny rectangle in that same box as the text on the first row, the rectangle appears, but the text doesn't. However, the text in the boxes from the 2nd row down print out perfectly.

 

Sometimes the text gets cut in half, if you get what I mean. But it always happens to the first row.

 

I don't have much data in my table, the first row is usually the titles, ITEM/DESCRIPTION/QTY/DIMENSION etc.

[SLW210]

What fonts are you using? Try going to a different font. What setting are you using for the plot?

 

All this visually available info and no screen shots or files posted.

[neuri]

Here is a picture.

 

 

The printer alignment is correct as other drawings print with no error, in fact, only the excel table section has this issue. Other parts print out perfectly.

[SLW210]

I do not see a picture.

[Ollie8974]

The way the text is cut off, usually indicates the cell row is not high enough, or the text font is too large. Increase the cell row height or a smaller size font. check the cell text justification try center. I have never seen the misalignment of the cell lines, like that before. Try increasing the width of that column or a smaller font size.

[ReMark]

Looks like it was truncated. Did the spreadsheet overlap the drawing border by any chance?

[neuri]

Ollie:

 

the cells are all "squeezed", it's only this top row. Font sizes, alignments etc. are all the same. I will try a different font tomorrow, if this doesn't work out, I might have to manually add text in using the Text tool in AutoCAD, that's going to be slow as heck...

 

ReMark:

 

Nope, it's within the border. But this gives me an idea... I'll try moving the table to the centre and printing again , see if it acts up.

[neuri]

Well I'm stumped, when I move the table to the centre , it prints fine.

 

No changes to the font, alignment, text size/height etc.

 

-_-

[Ollie8974]

OK, From the description in the above post, "When I move the table to the center" I assume you mean the center of the printer paper. It sounds like the image was running into the set up margins of the printer page set up.

[neuri]

Its the weekend now , on monday i'll take a screenshot and a picture of the paper after its printed so you can see the border and how it appears after printing.

[Ollie8974]

Can you also post a screen shot of the paper before you got the problem corrected.

[neuri]

I didnt correct the problem, however, I found that all I need to do was move the table away from the border to get it to print correctly.

 

But I'm going to revert back to using my boss' hand drawn table, it's hard to align the excel tables and to get them to line up uniformly for a neater printout.