Excel: Hairline Widths Increase when Pasted from Excel

ID: Q82892

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Excel for Windows, versions 2.1, 2.1c, 2.1d, 3.0, 4.0
Microsoft Excel for the Macintosh, versions 2.2, 3.0, 4.0

SUMMARY

Hairlines in graphic objects copied from Excel (such as charts) do not paste as expected into other applications. The hairlines are replaced with lines of one screen pixel width, resulting in thicker printed lines.

Workaround

To create thin lines in an Excel object, paste an oversized version of the object in the destination application and reduce the size of the object using the application's print reduction capabilities. The printed lines will be thinner, but they may not be hairlines.

MORE INFORMATION

A hairline is the narrowest line a printer is capable of printing. If the printer resolution is 300 dots per inch (dpi), a hairline would be 1/300 (1 pixel of printer resolution wide). The Macintosh screen only supports 72 dpi. Worksheet gridlines provide one example of hairlines. Excel's clipboard format does not currently include the necessary PostScript information to describe hairlines.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Excel for Windows version 5.0, and Microsoft Excel for the Macintosh version 5.0.

Additional query words: 2.1 2.10c 2.10d 2.20 3.0 hair line


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Last Reviewed: March 24, 1999