2709 point limit in Excel 2007 scatter plot

[Vivianne]

It appears that I cannot print a line-only scatter plot with more than 2709
points in the series.

In a new workbook, I filled column A with "=row()" and column B with
"=sin(0.01*a1)". The chart appears correctly on the screen and in the print
preview, however printing to an HP printer (tried both laserjet 6 and deskjet
6100 series) or Adobe 9 PDF driver results in a chart with axes and legend
but no data.

If I change the range to 2709 points or less, the chart prints properly. If
I format the plot to include markers, it prints properly.

The system I'm using has both Excel 2003 and 2007 on it. I can save the
file as either a .xls or .xlsx file and open the file in Excel 2003. The
chart prints properly in this version of Excel.

I tried to reproduce the problem on a another computer, which did NOT have
Excel 2003 installed, and the problem does not appear. There are multiple
differences between the two systems however, so I cannot determine if this is
correlation or coincidence. I am very hesitant to uninstall Excel 2003 on my
main computer, since 2007 continues to present minor glitches like this one
that make life difficult.

Any comments/suggestions would be welcome.

Regards,

Vivianne

 

[Bernard Liengme]

In Excel 2007: I used the same formulas as you and copied down to row 3800
Made an XY chart with Line and no markers
Printed just the chart on an HP 1200 and on an HP L7680 with no problems
Did this on my old PC (Win XP with both Office 2003 and Office 2007
installed)

Many times when a line does not print on an HP printer it is because the
line width is less than the printer's resolution. Have you tired increasing
the line width? However, my old HP1200 had no trouble at width of 1 pt.
I believe there is also a memory size consideration.

So I get the same results as you on your 'other computer'; sound like the
fault is in the set up on the first computer (not with XL2007)
best wishes

 

[Vivianne]

Thanks for the input. I've done some additional searching, and others have
observed this problem, and like me, can't always reproduce the effect.

I noticed that unchecking the smoothed line option for a plot resolves this
issue. Others have claimed that changing the line thickness can also resolve
the issue, but I could not get that to work.

With so many points on a single graph, I imagine there are few instances
where a smoothed line would look different from a not-smoothed line. I would
prefer to know the root cause of this problem, but at the very least, I can
get my graphs printed without running around to multiple computers...

 

[Bernard Liengme]

I believe the 'root cause' lies with the printer
I agree with you about the smoothing with 2000 plus data points
best wishes