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General discussion

Excel and pagebreaks

Nov 20, 2005 9:54AM PST

MS Office Excel 2002

I am trying to save an MS Excel worksheet with page breaks(after setting page size at page setup), and with he breaks visible, but when I open the saved worksheet, the page breaks are no longer there. It seems that they do not get saved. For ease of things, I have to record a macro then use a shortcut key to have the page breaks shown up, and this only for "default page breaks" - same for all worksheet. This is so for Excel 97, Excel 2000 and now Excel 2002. Has anything changed for Excel 2003 ? Thanks.

christy

Discussion is locked

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Although the breaks may not show
Nov 20, 2005 12:19PM PST

after saving and reopening, they are still there. To see them again, either go to File / Page Preview and then Close it, or go to View / Page Break Review and then back to View / Normal. In either case your print area and page breaks will now show on your spreadsheet. This works for Excel 2000 through 2003; I don't remember about Excel 97, and I no longer have it installed for testing.

An advantage of using the View method above is that the print area and the breaks can be seen and modified, if desired, by simple dragging.

Hope this helps

Frank

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Thanks, but....
Nov 20, 2005 3:34PM PST
...after saving and reopening, they are still there. To see them again, either go to File / Page Preview and then Close it, or go to View / Page Break Review and then back to View / Normal.

That's what I am trying to ask.....why don't they appear when the saved worksheet is opened, if they are ''still there'' ? I have to go through the whole process again to have them showed up - that means they are not there any more.

''To see them again....'' well, that's what I have been doing, in both inserting the page breaks and to ''see them again'', and I use a recorded macro for that(Alt+key). I can also insert page breaks from the Insert menu, but that is for a slightly different purpose. However, that also does not save the page breaks.

christy
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Why?
Nov 20, 2005 9:03PM PST

What many don't tell you is the software we use is far from perfect. And many times there are no plans to fix the issue. Microsoft along with many others has many examples of leaving an issue unresolved as they hurry along to the next version.

What to do? Either try out alternatives such as Open Office or learn how to work around the bugs and shortcomings.

Bob

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Work around
Nov 20, 2005 10:52PM PST

I guess it is not worth fixing it, since a lot of users are still exchanging their $$ for the program despite it being far from perfect. Yes, I have my work around. As for Open Office, I am already using its Writer program.

christy

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About Writer. There is hope there. Here's why.
Nov 20, 2005 10:58PM PST

Open Office has a public bug list. If you really find a bug, you can submit it to show there.

Microsoft's bug list is nowhere to be found and as such there is no pressure to kill off the biggest bugs.

What Microsoft Office bugs? Let me share my pet peeve?

-> Word's enduring issues with the NORMAL.DOT file.

After a decade (that's 10 years), Microsoft has yet to fix the NORMAL.DOT issue.

Cheers,

Bob

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As I said,
Nov 21, 2005 1:01AM PST

the print area and page breaks, including any inserted manually, are saved. You can verify this by printing a spreadsheet after having saved and reopened it. (Use one in which the print area and page breaks are not the defaults so that you can be sure it is using the saved information.) You will find the page layout is exactly as it was prior to the save, indicating the layout was preserved. Also, the fact that you can easily redisplay these settings means they have been saved. Just because you cannot see them on the spreadsheet view does not mean they were not saved, are not there, and cannot be used. It is just that Microsoft does not display them after a save and reopen. You do not need to go through the process or reestablishing them; they work just as well unseen as seen. If you do want to see them it is just a few mouse clicks, and that is not reestablishing them, merely displaying them.

If you do want the page boundaries visible all of the time, I guess you have no option other than the macro you are now using. I can find no way to change this in Excel itself. But running a macro just to display them seems to me as much trouble as the three mouss clicks (File / Page Preview and then Close)needed to to the same.

Why is this so? Why is the Page Breaks choice under Tools / Options not carried over as other options are? Is it a bug, an oversight, or is it by conscious choice? I do not know -- you probably must ask Microsoft's Excel programming group to get an answer to this. (It is at least 95% certain they would say it is an intended ''feature.'') Perhaps they feel that most users want them hidden most of the time -- that they consider them a distraction when working on the sheet. Because it is so easy to display them at will, it may not be considered any problem.

Although neither hiding them nor showing them is a big deal for me, I guess I do tend to lean slightly in favor of them being hidden. Once I have set up a spreadsheet and specified its page layout, I really do not need to see the boundaries on the sheet view -- I know they will be where I set them. If I alter the spreadsheet in a manner such that I desire to see and/or reset the boundaries, I can get to that option with two mouse clicks.

What does seem likely is that Microsoft has had relatively few complaints about this over the years and several versions of Excel. If users had complained en masse, it might have been changed, as it seems it should be a rather trivial programming effort.

Frank

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Thanks...
Nov 21, 2005 9:37AM PST

I appreciate your points. But perhaps there has been a slight misunderstanding. It is true that the page setup is saved, so the page breakbreaks are indeed there although not displayed. What I meant for the page breaks to be saved is for the breaks to be displayed when the saved worksheet is opened, i.e. it should be "really saved". As it is, only the page setup is saved, but not the breaks. The focus is on the page breaks, rather than page setup.

Normally, it is not necessary for the breaks to be shown; but it is useful for editing and then printing. Although it is no problem with a few mouse clicks or running the saved macro, it would be nice to be able to open the worksheet with the page breaks already being displayed.

chisty