Office for Mac Excel 16.43 - Line and Font Error with PDF export

JBr 1 Reputation point
2020-11-12T14:02:23.777+00:00

Hi Experts,

I recently got a new iMac (late 2020 with Catalina 10.15.7) at work, on which the newest Office Version has been installed (Version 16.43.20110804).

When opening files in Excel 16.43 I initially created with Excel 14.something it seems everything is working just perfect in screen, but when I print the documents or save as PDF two problems occur: Firstly, lines are remarkably thicker than on the screen. A dotted line (in Excel 14.xx a dotted hairline) is about 1mm thick, a full line is also always thicker than on screen.
Secondly the font has become irregular with the spacing between the letters. I mostly use Arial Narrow. The smaller the font size I use the worse the problem becomes. Also the overall layout seems pushed together. Both is visible in the two screenshots attached.39310-after-update.png39386-before-update.png

The problems also occurs in new files, and they also happen saving via the printer. Saved files can be opened and printed correctly on older workstations with Excel, it happens with documents that are layouted perfectly on the final printing format, as well as larger layouts that are "fitted on 1 Page". On every other workstation with the newest Office Version (16.xx) the problem happens.

Googling my problem shows that I'm not alone with this problem, but I haven't found a solution. Neither did I find the problem yet in this forum.

Thanks in advance and excuse me if i got some specific terms wrong since I'm not using the english program.

JBr

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Office: A suite of Microsoft productivity software that supports common business tasks, including word processing, email, presentations, and data management and analysis.Mac: A family of Apple personal computers that run the macOS operating system.
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Excel: A family of Microsoft spreadsheet software with tools for analyzing, charting, and communicating data.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. JBr 1 Reputation point
    2020-11-13T11:33:30.827+00:00

    Hi John Korchock

    It seems really bad, but was irritates me is the sudden change between the two program versions.
    The "enhance thin lines option" is already enabled in Acrobat Pro, since we often draw documents with hairlines in our CAD software.

    What I noticed is, that exporting with the PDF creator in the "acrobat" tab (usually I used save as.. or print..), the line thicknesses are right but the font size is off (slightly too large) and the dotted line is a continues line. Is there a work-around with this function? The lines i could live with but the font size makes it difficult to layout / set the right sizes for columns. The "preferences" for that acrobat tab doesn't show anything though39686-font-size.png39649-lines.png

    Thanks for your input.

    JBr

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  2. Emi Zhang-MSFT 22,086 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2020-11-17T08:29:50.517+00:00

    Hi @JBr ,
    Try to uninstall and back to initial version of Office for Mac.

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