Excel: Troubleshooting Plotter Problems With Charts

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Excel for Windows, versions 3.0 and 4.0

Summary:

Several errors may occur when you attempt to plot a Microsoft Excel chart to a plotter. You may receive an "Out of Memory" or "Not Enough Memory to Print" message or the printer panel may display "Memory Overlow." Microsoft Excel sometimes displays the dialog box "Now printing Chart1.xlc" indefinitely, however, nothing will come out of the plotter. Text from Microsoft Windows version 3.0 and worksheets from Microsoft Excel may print correctly.

More Information:

The most likely reason for an unsuccessful plot is lack of Windows GDI heap space. The GDI heap is limited to 64K of data and that can fill up very quickly when trying to plot. The first indication that you are running out of GDI is that titles or axes will not plot out. "Out of Memory" errors are consistent with this behavior.

There are several ways to increase the amount of GDI before attempting to plot the chart:

1. To disable the tool bar in version 4.0, choose Toolbars from the Options menu and Hide each tool bar. In version 3.0, disable the tool bar by canceling the selection in the Tool Bar check box in the dialog box that appears when you choose Workspace from the Options menu.

2. Eliminate the background wallpaper in the Program Manager. This is done in the Desktop section of the Control Panel.

3. Reduce the number of icons in the Program Manager.

4. From the File menu in Microsoft Excel, choose Print and select the Draft check box.

5. Reduce the complexity of the chart, by removing a legend, shadow boxes, and so on.

6. Embed the chart on a worksheet and set a Print Area that surrounds the chart. From the File menu, choose Page Setup, and cancel the selection of Gridlines. Print the worksheet.

7. From the File menu, choose Print. In Microsoft Excel version 4.0, select the Fast but no graphics box from the Print dialog box. In Microsoft Excel version 3.0, select the Draft Quality box from the Print dialog box.

For more information, query on the following words:

   confirming and communications and plotter

   -or-

   printer and timeouts and updated

   -or-

   print and large and paper and plotters