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General => Technical Help => Topic started by: Cathymjp on Thursday 09 March 17 17:08 GMT (UK)
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Hi,
I have spent some time constructing my family tree on MS excel. Having got to the stage of printing it the document has been converted to PDF so that the local printer can produce it on one sheet of paper. On the second attempt to convert it I have managed to get it on one sheet by setting it to landscape, and reducing it to 10%. When it converts, there are no page breaks and it is good to read. I took it to the printer today and it printed on one of his large machines but the type is so small you cannot read it. He has suggested that I try to convert it by changing the paper size to A3 but I cannot find this on excel, there is not a paper size larger than A4 on the menu. Can anyone suggest how I can convert this chart to print it off?
Thank you
Cathy
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Set the paper size in Page Setup
Cheers
Guy
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Hi Guy,
I have tried to do that but A3 is not listed in the page set up. I did wonder if this was to do with the fact that my printer cannot print larger than A4 and that is why it does not appear in the page set up list. I tried to alter the paper size in the printer set up to see if that made a difference but it did not.
Cathy
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Hi Cathy
Have you tried highlighting all what you wish to print, then in page set up choose print selection and fit to one page, then it may pull up the A3 size, then you can fit it all on to A3 page. Good luck
Thanks
Christine
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Hi Christine,
Thank you for the suggestion but I still cannot make it work. So near to printing it out but am stumped as to how to finally achieve what I want to do with it.
Regards
Cathy
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Although my Epson is an A4 printer, in options I have both A2 and A3 paper sizes.
Brian
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If your printer hasn't got A3 option then why not take the Excel file to printer and get him to set file to print on one A3 page using his/her page options instead??
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From your post it looks like you want a pdf to print on A3.
If you download and install cutepdf writer this will install another printer for you to select and then you can choose A3 output. Good luck.
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Just a thought:
Are you using Page Setup or Print Setup?
I'm not an Excel user but in most such software you can set the page to any size regardless of the actual printer paper size. Then, if you print an A3 page to an A4 printer, it gives you the option of either shrinking the page to fit one sheet or split it over two sheets . . . etc.
Mike.
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Depending upon which version of Excel you are using it has a built in ability to "print" to pdf
at Print, select Microsoft to PDF as your printer
click on printer properties
select advanced
under paper size select A3 and click on ok (and again to return to main screen)
Failing that, CutePDF as recommended by TrevorW is an excellent tool.
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It may be an idea to say what make/model of printer you're using as someone knowing that may be able to help further?
I choose;
File
Print
Properties
Size
or
File
Page Setup
Margins
Options
Size
In 'Size' there's a list of 23 choices
(I have no mention of pdf) it just prints as an excel file which prints off & looks like a normal word doc)
Annie
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Install LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/ (https://www.libreoffice.org/) ) the free alternative to MS Office.
You'll be able to open your Excel spreadsheet directly then choose A3 as the paper size (see my screen-shot). You can then fiddle around with font style, sizes, margins etc until you're completely happy with the preview then save it as a PDF with a single click from the toolbar.
You can also choose to keep your spreadsheet in native Excel format or save it as a LibreOffice format file (which uses the Open Document format).
Couldn't be any easier. :)
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Hi, and thank you all very much for your help. I did contact a nephew of mine and he suggested that I download PDF24 printer driver. I did this and managed to save it to A3 as advised. The family tree has printed out well, and is now about seven feet long but is all on one tree so I am very pleased with it. Thank you Paul for showing me how to use LibreOffice. I am so pleased that the problem is now solved and the end result looks so impressive. I thought that I might have to start again on another package which filled me with dread. ;D
Cathy
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That's a big family tree Cathy :)
If you have to repeat the process in future you might get even better results by selecting a paper size of A1 or A0 - most PDF file 'printers' will let you go up to this kind of size.
By using A3 size the printing company is having to 'stretch' the PDF to fit the paper size they are actually using. Whilst PDF's generally stretch quite well, if you start with a PDF sized at A1 or A0 there is less stretching required to fit to the paper size. As you originally discovered, going from A4 to A0 (or larger if you ended up with 7 feet) produced a poor result, so although A3 was good, you may find A1 is even better :)
Edited to add:
If you are using Paul's technique with LibreOffice you may find that A3 is the largest 'A' size listed, but there should be a 'User' option which allows you to specify the exact size of the page which can be at least A1.
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Thank you for that very useful information Paul. I am making some more additions to it for my distant cousin as he is putting living relatives on the bottom of it now. I will try A1 or AO and see how that works. Very grateful for all the teccie help.
Cathy ;D