Contents of Cells Show Through Objects with HP Printers

ID: Q68269

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Excel for Windows, versions 3.x, 4.x, 5.0, 5.0c
Microsoft Excel for Windows 95, version 7.0
Microsoft Windows versions 3.0, 3.1

SUMMARY

When an object is placed on top of a cell that contains information, the contents of the cell will show (bleed) through when the worksheet is printed from a Hewlett-Packard (HP) printer. The object will block the gridlines but the cell contents or data will print over the object. Print preview appears correctly.

This is due to the way that the HP Printer Control Language (PCL) is written (any printer driver using PCL will display this way).

Workarounds

There are several ways to work around this problem. If the cells are formatted using Modern, Roman, or Script, text does not bleed through. If you format the text as white, the text will not display.

There is also another workaround available. If you have Adobe Type Manager (ATM) fonts version 1.1 or Bitstream fonts version 1.2, you can format the cells with one of the ATM or Bitstream fonts to prevent the text from bleeding through.

You can also avoid the problem if you are using an HP Laserjet IIP, by setting true-type as graphics which also prints the text box as an opaque box.

An alternate workaround is to use a TrueType font and print TrueType as Graphics. From the File menu choose Page Setup. From the Page Setup dialog, choose Printer Setup, then choose Setup and then Options. Select Print TrueType as Graphics.

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Last Reviewed: March 21, 1999