Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 May 3

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May 3

Problem printing an Excel document

I am having a problem printing an Excel document. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance. When I look at the document on my screen, it all fits onto one page. When I hit "print", the document creates light-colored dashed lines around the spreadsheet cells to indicate where one page ends and another begins (top and bottom, as well as left and right). So, these dashed lines indicate/confirm that the data will all fit onto one single page. However, when I go to print the document, it always comes out as two pages: one page with the data, and a second blank page afterward. When I converted the Excel document (by "save as") into a PDF file, it does the same thing: page 1 is the data and there is a blank white page as page 2. How do I get rid of this second blank page? I tried playing with the margins, and I tried adjusting the cell heights and widths, such that there is plenty of "free" blank space around the data. And it should all appear on one page. Any idea as to why that second blank page is always appearing? And how to get rid of it? This is Excel 2013. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:58, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I've had the same problem, though I use a much older version of Excel. I've assumed that I must have something in a lower cell, or the software thinks there is, but deleting following rows doesn't always solve the problem. Perhaps someone else can come up with the full reason and solution, but, meanwhile, what I do is to highlight the cells I want printed, and use "print selection". Dbfirs 11:21, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Or you can just use the print option to specify how many pages to print. StuRat (talk) 11:38, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

When you "delet[e] following rows" (or columns), you have to be sure that you delete the whole row/column, not merely its contents. Last I checked, this was achieved by highlighting the row/column header, then right-clicking on it and choosing a "Delete" option. --Tardis (talk) 17:08, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly how I go about deleting a row or a column. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:30, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. However, the problem is not only the printing, but also the creation of the PDF file. Now, a 1-page PDF file always becomes a 2-page PDF file (with the second page blank). That is another problem I'd like to solve, above and beyond the printing issue. Any ideas? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 13:03, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

There may be a "Print to file" option that allows you to specify the number of pages and create a PDF file. Also, as far as actually fixing the problem, could there be blank header or footer sections it's printing out ? If so, maybe you need to remove those, rather than just leave them blank. StuRat (talk) 13:31, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Another option for printing is in the print options where you can "fit to one page". For the PDF, you could use Cute PDF Writer, a free plugin from CutePDF that acts like a printer but creates a PDF. I've been using it for many years without problems. Dbfirs 15:05, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Is it possible that you have some discrepancy between the paper size you're using for printing and the paper size you're using in Excel or in your printer setup? That's usually the cause of these kinds of mixups. SteveBaker (talk) 15:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

The fact that it saves to a file with a blank page, too, implies that it's not a printer issue. StuRat (talk) 15:21, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

No, I do not think this has anything to do with the printer. As I said above, the Excel spreadsheet – on its own – places little dashed lines around the cells at the four margins (left, right, top, bottom) to indicate where one page ends and the next begins. And those dashed lines indicate that the data are all on Page 1. Is there any way for me to place a copy of my Excel spreadsheet onto this Ref Help Desk page? Then, maybe someone can look at the actual spreadsheet and see what exactly is going wrong. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:33, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

If you highlight just the data you want to print and copy-paste it to a completely new Excel sheet, does it do the same thing? -- 140.202.10.134 (talk) 15:05, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm. Never thought of that. I just tried it. And ... it does indeed contain itself to one page. However, it removes all the formatting of the original spreadsheet: colors, column widths, row heights, fonts, alignments, etc. This particular spreadsheet has a lot of formatting involved, so it would be a lot of work to re-create it all over again the second time around. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:21, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

(e/c) When I run into this, it's almost always caused by text on the far right column not fitting entirely within the cell. If even a tiny sliver of text falls outside the margin, Excel assumes you obviously need that sliver printed on a second page. It could even be the tiny bit of blank space at the edge of a character being printed. Make sure nothing is overhanging, even by a little bit. Matt Deres (talk) 16:38, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I understand what you are saying. But ... the Excel program itself specifically delineates where a page stops and a new page starts by indicating light-gray dashed lines around the cells at the four margins of each page (top, bottom, left, and right). Right? How can that indication signify only one page ... yet two get printed? Also, the "print preview" shows only one page of data and one page blank. Those "overhanging" characters of data would typically show up on the next page in a print preview. And, furthermore, my bottom-most row and my right-most column are actually blank (and are only there for aesthetic reasons to provide blank white space around the edges of the data on the page). Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:01, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Is there any way for me to place a copy of my Excel spreadsheet onto this Ref Help Desk page, somehow? Then, maybe someone can look at the actual spreadsheet and see what exactly is going wrong. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:19, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Go to the View menu, and select Page Break Preview. You will see your document broken up into Page 1, Page 2 etc and blue dotted lines where the page breaks are. Click and drag the blue dotted lines to get your document all onto one page. --Viennese Waltz 19:26, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. I actually called the tech support people at Microsoft. The rep took remote access of my computer. Even he could not figure out what the problem was. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:14, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Did you try doing what I said in the post above? --Viennese Waltz 15:24, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I did try that. It did "squeeze" everything onto only one page. But, it screwed up all the formatting and margins, so the page did not look aesthetically pleasing (neat, clean, centered, etc.). For some reason, the computer "thinks" that Column I exists, when in fact, it is a blank column with no entries whatsoever (and nothing overlapping into it from Column H). So, it is printing Column I (blank) as page 2. I can't figure out the problem. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:23, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:56, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I think probably Matt Deres (above) has identified the reason for the problem. There is a cell in column H that is overflowing into column I so the print driver thinks it has to print a second page with just a blank column I. Even text that goes near the right hand edge of column H might be reinterpreted as overflowing by a printer driver that treats the font differently. Also check for trailing spaces as Matt suggests. Oh, I've just re-read what you wrote above, and it can't be that, can it? Are you sure that column H is completely blank? Have you tried deleting it? Dbfirs 08:24, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks. Yes, I have deleted the column, so it no longer "exists". And, furthermore, the column to its immediate left is entirely blank; there is nothing in it to "spill over" into the next column to the right. As I said, even the Microsoft techs could not diagnose this problem, when they took remote access of my computer. The only thing that "worked" was to do a copy/paste into a new blank spreadsheet; but that removed all the formatting of the original, which would be too cumbersome to do a second time. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 13:37, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

HD copying speed on Windows

On Windows computers (at least), when copying files from one hard drove to another, copying a large number of small files is a lot slower (in MB/s) than copying a few large files. What is the primary reason for this? Is it the time it takes the head to seek the track or is there a big overhead in creating and closing files? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:58, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Probably both of those. Also:

3) Indexes need to be updated, and the smaller the files the higher the ratio of index space to data space.

4) As far as prioritizing jobs, the O/S may give a higher priority to a copy job when it's in the middle of copying a file, to avoid leaving that file open, than when between copying two files.

5) When copying a file, it needs to find an open spot for it, and copying lots of files requires lots of searching for open spots. StuRat (talk) 11:42, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm usually copying to a HD that isn't indexed. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:30, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Different filesystems have different performance depending on their design. Depends what you mean by "indexed", but probably what stu's referring to is the file table (called various things depending on the filesystem). This is probably a large portion of the difference. There's also metadata to update (file name, timestamps, permissions, etc.). The other, possibly biggest, performance penalty is going to be disk seeks on both ends, including seeks to the file table itself. Shadowjams (talk) 21:38, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

By "indexing" I meant in Windows, the drive property "Allow files on this drive to have their contents indexed...". Copying over a million files to USB 2 external drives is a painful process - one I've been doing for about 2 days. But I'm nearly finished. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:42, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

That kind of indexing is not your problem. It's not directly related to the filesystem (NTFS). The Windows file indexing is done offline... that is to say, it does it whenever it can find spare time (system isn't busy). It doesn't do it immediately on files if that would slow things down. Shadowjams (talk) 23:04, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Right. To explain to the OP further, the files in a folder may be spread out physically all over the hard disk, and individual files may even be spread out over multiple locations, if the hard disk is badly fragmented. In order to use this mess, it's necessary to have records of where to look for each file, and that needs to be kept up-to-date at all times, so those types of indexes must be updated whenever a file is moved or copied. StuRat (talk)

Some file systems are killer when it comes to speed, but the moving metal of HDDs is a final frontier to all of them, unless the files are physically close (as in, on the same physical track). Good defragmenters try to order files, but that takes a lot of time, since they have to move about every file to maintain perfect order. You can get lucky if most of the small files are in the same directory (or "folder", in Microsoft-speak), or you can spend all night and not get lucky :(

The latter is a non-issue with Random Access Memories like SSDs and thumb drives; it's the sustained data transfer that counts there.

Mere defragmentation is not good enough with small files; they are usually way too to small to get fragmented in the first place. In my experience, file copying depends on the number of accesses per megabyte more than anything else, and you cannot get any lower than one access per file, discounting the few "lucky" cases. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 06:56, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

YouTube and musicI'M do eamgites not working

No matter which site I go to, anything that's streaming audio and/or video doesn't play. It's either got that spinning circle forever or it quits after the first two seconds. And if I try on a different browser, it'll make the program stop responding altogether. What is causing it and how do I fix it? 69.156.170.189 (talk) 08:26, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm rather amazed it ever works, as the Internet just isn't designed for that. They make no guarantee that you will get real-time communication, which is required for streaming media. StuRat (talk) 11:44, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it never works for me either unless I travel to the nearest town to get a faster connection. In theory, buffering should overcome the real-time problem mentioned by StuRat, but the buffer always seems to be too small for slow connections. One day, we'll all get a proper broadband connection ... maybe. Dbfirs 14:59, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

And here I thought the internet was designed to move packets of data around the world. —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 02:40, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

It is, but not in real time, as StuRat said above. Those of you with a fast connection probably don't notice the delays that cause frustrating stuttering and spinning circles, so you don't realise how fortunate you are compared with those of us who get only a third-world service. I wonder if the OP is able try a different internet connection? (I assume that the deleted comment from a proxy in a different country was not the OP) Dbfirs 08:42, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

No, that really was from me (the different IP addresses are the result of me traveling). I normally have no issue streaming anything, but the problems I described started suddenly and made it impossible to access music streaming sites (not even on NPR could I play anything). I'm on Bell Fibe, which means this sort of crap shouldn't even be an issue (although Bell typically sucks). Telling me I shouldn't expect it to work because that's not what the internet is designed for isn't the least bit helpful. 66.249.88.33 (talk) 18:55, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Bell does typically suck, but that's not always the simple answer. Do you have any browser add-ons or plugins installed that may be interfering? You could try disabling them. Clear your cache and all that, too. Maybe reinstall the browser. No idea if it'll work or what the actual problem is, but sometimes that works for various things, for some reason. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:18, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

You didn't say that this was a new problem. I assume that you've tried a different computer on the same internet connection, because this would determine whether the problem is in your computer as InedibleHulk suggests. The fact that the problem occurs across different browsers indicates that it's either the operating system (malware?) or the internet connection. If you've tried the same computer on different internet connections, then the problem is almost certainly within the computer, and not as I initially thought. Try running some anti-virus software. Dbfirs 21:14, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

The fact that you're traveling may be a clue. You may have a slower connection there than at your usual location. You could try streaming video at a lower resolution or frame rate. Not sure what you can do about streaming audio, though. If there's an option to download first, then play it, I'd certainly recommend that. If need be, you can download it all night long, as you sleep, and play it in the morning. StuRat (talk) 21:38, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Hard to imagine a wonky or slow connection could cause a crash, like in the "different browser". During blizzards or rainstorms, my wireless sometimes drops to dialup levels, and it's never caused a stability problem. That said (and without being trying to be that guy), I have a Mac. Microsoft does typically suck.

Another thing to consider is the sketchiness of some of these streaming sites. Virtually anything that offers free live sports will throw in a large bonus bundle of Javascript voodoo. I recommend pirating with current virus protection and NoScript (or similar), and only letting the bare minimum through. Same for YouTube, I guess. Google typically doesn't suck, but better safe than sorry. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:58, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Well I'm on a different ISP now and I left my computer behind so I have no way of knowing which is the main culprit. Guess I'll know when I get back, hopefully the issue will be resolved by then. 66.249.88.33 (talk) 01:50, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

removing websteroids

I can’t uninstall the unwanted program websteroids from my computer. I’m using windows vista and google chrome.

I looked up how to delete it but the situations other people have experienced don’t seem to apply for me. For example, numerous websites I have accessed state that one should simply uninstall the progam from your list of programs by going to control panel -> programs and features -> uninstall a program. When I do this, Websteroids does not appear in my list of programs.

Another website says when using chrome, go to Tools -> extensions and remove it from there, again, it does not appear as one of my extensions.

I have also completely reset the browser settings in google chrome, to no avail.

Every time I turn my computer on, my anti-virus software asks me if I want to block websteroids, to which I say yes, but I still get the annoying spaceship flying in front of my web pages!

Please help! Thanks RichYPE (talk) 18:45, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Websteroids might be the publisher name, not the program name. If you pick on each program in the list of programs to remove, the publisher will be listed. Hopefully some of the programs will be published by Websteroids. Remove all of those. StuRat (talk) 20:44, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

In a search for "websteroids", most of the top results are "how to remove". —Tamfang (talk) 02:58, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I have just checked all the programs installed on my computer, unfortunately, none are published by websteroids. As I stated before, I have followed the advice from numerous 'how to remove' pages but still not got anywhere. Please help! RichYPE (talk) 08:50, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

There are a number of suggestions on both the first and second page of this forum thread. Dismas|^(talk) 09:46, 4 May 2014 (UTC)