Excel page setup problem

Using Office for Mac - Excel

I created at worksheet and setup the sheet as legal size - 8.5x14 in landscape layout. Then save it that way.

However, when I re-open the file, it opens as letter size - 8.5x11.

Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

File > Page Setup > Page > Options... > Paper Size
Select US Legal, and the "sideways" icon for landscape.

If that's the way you did it, you did nothing wrong. Those settings should be saved with the file.

That's what I thought, still... it is not working

You could try isolating the plist file and generating a new one to see if that would fix things. Or, try Escel from a different user account and see if it behaves.

Excel 2008 for Mac Page Setup

I have been sweating over the same problem all afternoon. I cannot get my spreadsheet to save a Legal page size in the Page Setup Dialog. When I quit Excel and save it, the next time I open the spreadsheet it has reverted to US Letter Borderless for some strange reason. I even clicked Save as Default in the dialog drop down and it doesn't help.
I'm very frustrated with this problem and would welcome suggestions. I have just upgraded to Lion so that may have something to do with it.

Excel Page Setup

I took the advice of toMACsh and logged in as another user. Excel worked fine. So trashing the pref file should fix it.

Dave Wightman said:

I took the advice of toMACsh and logged in as another user. Excel worked fine. So trashing the pref file should fix it.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily, but perhaps.

Excel Page Setup

You're right. It doesn't necessarily fix it because the original problem file still doesn't work. I was able to bring the file that worked in the other user into my user via the Shared user folder and it works OK. It's only full page charts that gave me the problem but the page size kept reverting back to Letter from Legal. Maybe the file itself was corrupted somehow.

Excel Page Setup

Now even the file I brought over from a different user on my mac is reverting to Letter. Excel 2008 under Lion simply won't remember its page setting. Don't know whether it's an Excel problem or a Lion problem. I do know that the Page Setup reverts to whatever you've set as default in the Print and Scan System Preferences pane. That's the only way I could get it to retain a Legal paper size setting. By the way I did a complete uninstall of Excel including all pref files and then reinstalled it. No change.

Dave, the problem is somewhere in your User Account. It didn't fail under a new account. You tried the plist file, and that didn't help. You can pull your hair out trying to figure out what is corrupt. You will fail. Bite the bullet and move all your files to a new account. Once you get 'em all, trash the bad account.

OK - You're right. I'm in the process of transferring now and it's not as easy as it sounds. I have to avoid transferring the user library for fear it's the source of the corruption so I have to re-setup mail and everything!
Thanks for your help though MAC.

You're welcome.

That's Macintosh, or rather MAC in tosh... toMACsh

Back Again

After going to the considerable trouble of creating a new user and transferring all my files I thought I had the problem solved. It worked fine from 11 January until today 18 January and I opened the file every day. Now today it's back to its old behaviour of reverting Page Setup to US Letter. It won't remember the page setup at all. When it's working it's saving the page setup for each worksheet in a file so it can't really be the Pref file, it's got to be saved with the document file itself. When it's not working it reverts to whatever page size is set as default in the Print and Scan system preferences for the printer.
Wonder if Capt Steve ever solved it or if toMACsh has any more ideas?
Dave

Dave Wightman said:

Maybe the file itself was corrupted somehow.

Click to expand...

Dave Wightman said:

Wonder if Capt Steve ever solved it or if toMACsh has any more ideas?

Click to expand...

Only one: Open a blank file and copy and paste everything from the problem file.

If more than one file is a problem, that won't help, of course

Still working on this but failed again. Used a new User again and started from scratch. Worked OK for a few days then Excel refused to save the page setup and always reverts to US Letter. It's a mystery!

Well, try one or both of these sites:
http://www.excelforum.com/
Excel Questions - MrExcel Message Board

If anyone can help you get to the bottom of it, post back here with the solution to help others who might find this thread.

So far I've added to my knowledge base but have not solved the problem yet!
I've discovered that if I save in .xls format everything works fine and the Page Setup is properly saved. If I use the .xlsx format it refuses to save the Page Setup info. So that's my workaround right now - just use the older file format.
I've also found that Word files work fine in either the old or the new format. Page Setup is remembered.
I've still got another user set up (with only a couple of files on it) where everything works fine but I'm pretty sure that if I start transferring all my files to this new user the same error will creep in after a few days as happened the last time I tried it.
There must be some pref or cache in my user library which is doing this but I haven't found it.
Didn't find any similar issues discussed on those other fora. Thanks anyway.
Dave

Dave Wightman said:

Didn't find any similar issues discussed on those other fora. Thanks anyway.

Click to expand...

You could start your own.

Ugh. Just lost my first post.

The same thing has been happening to me for a couple of years in Excel (2008 for Mac). I have OS X 10.6.8. I thought it was my printer, but I just got a new one and the same thing happens. I select US Letter and next time I open the doc (it's something I work on every month), it's back to US Letter (borderless). I've set my default to US Letter. It happens if I save the doc as .xls or if I create a new doc. It doesn't happen in Word or any other apps.

Works fine for me using 10.6.8 and Office for Mac 2011 (also worked with 2004). What of the above have you tried?