Printing patterns in black & white printing to a color printer

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Mike - 01 Mar 2004 10:35 GMT

I have formatted some cells on a spreadsheet which I need
to print as black & white on a color printer.
I need to do this by setting the Black and White tick box
on the 'Sheet' tab of the File/Page Setup dialog.
But patterns do not print if Black and white is selected.

There are reasons why I need to do this from inside Excel
rather than tell the printer driver to print greyscale.

Is there any way to tell Excel to print patterns when
printing as black & white?

Much appreciated.

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Mike - 01 Mar 2004 10:44 GMT

I'm using Excel 2002 (XP) on WinXP.

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David McRitchie - 02 Mar 2004 15:17 GMT

The B&W option in the sheet tab is print Black only, there
is no gray scales involved. So if the pattern color is not
black (or black as automatic) then you won't see pattern coloration
nor colored hashing or other type patterns.
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

> I have formatted some cells on a spreadsheet which I need
> to print as black & white on a color printer.
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
> Much appreciated.

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David McRitchie - 02 Mar 2004 19:22 GMT

Hi Mike, (posted to printing newsgroup with email copy)
You emailed me

> Excel seems to always treat patterns as a greyscale version of black and
> white, therefore won't print the pattern.
>But do you know if there is any way to set the pattern (e.g. hashing) to black
> so that it will print when the B&W option is checked?

The default (automatic) hashing is black. You have to go out of your
way to change the color. Do you actually see a different color.

Format, cells, pattern
at the top setting the color affects the background color.
at the bottom choosing a pattern allows you to
chose a pattern such as hashing and a color for the hashing or
stipling, you will have to go through it twice, once for the pattern
and once for the pattern color don't confust the color here with
the background color at the top of the pattern dialog.

I use Excel 2000, but I doubt that anything has changed in later versions.

I can see a definite cause for confusion, as it looks like the colors
are split for the top and for the patterns, but this is the normal color
palette consisting of two parts. The color palette for the pattern
comes up when you select the pattern.
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

> The B&W option in the sheet tab is print Black only, there
> is no gray scales involved. So if the pattern color is not
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
> >
> > Much appreciated.

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