If you spend a lot of time in Excel and have ever tried printing images you’ve imported, you would probably notice that they come out squashed, distorted or stretched. This is a problem that has plagued me ever since my huge Excel projects of TPE and TRSG which contain hundreds of images between them.
After much searching through posts online I finally found a solution to the bug which Microsoft hasn’t ever bothered fixing. You have to go into ‘Page Layout’ > ‘Fonts’ and select the ‘Metro’ font.
This doesn’t actually change the font of the cells, but it does change the fonts used for the headers and footers of the Excel sheet.
I decided to dive deeper into other fonts that don’t alter the images because I hated the style of the ‘Metro’ font on my headers and footers. After a lot of testing I found 5 fonts in total which are the most accurate when printed. That’s not to say they are perfect, but they are off by such as small amount that you won’t be able to tell the difference.
To find the fonts which are least affected by this glitch I inserted a circle into my excel file swapping between the fonts and measuring the length and the width of it each time. This gives you the middle column below. This column shows the stretch of the shape and which direction it’s stretched in. If the width (first number) is bigger than the height, this font creates a horizontally stretched circle and if the height is bigger, this means the circle was stretched vertically.
Afterwards I subtracted the difference between the two number which gives me the ‘Offset’ number which signifies how warped the circle is as seen in the table below. The table below lists the different fonts in Excel 2010 and their offset. The lower the number on the end, the more perfect the shape. You could get away with a 1 or even 2 without people noticing the warping, but try to stay low.
These are the links which proved invaluable to me to figure out where to start to solve this problem:
Excel will not print images at correct height/width!! (Post by “Chinchilla”)
Images distorted when previewing or printing from Excel
| Font Name | Font Type | Width / Height | Offset |
| Office | 92×82 | 10 | |
| Office 2 | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Office Classic | 92×80 | 12 | |
| Office Classic 2 | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Adjacency | 92×82 | 10 | |
| Angles | Franklin Gothic Book | 71×71 | 0 |
| Apex | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Apothecary | 80×69 | 11 | |
| Aspect | 64×68 | 4 | |
| Austin | 80×69 | 11 | |
| Black Tie | 92×82 | 10 | |
| Civic | 71×70 | 1 | |
| Clarity | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Composite | 92×82 | 10 | |
| Concourse | 71×69 | 2 | |
| Couture | 92×82 | 10 | |
| Elemental | 80×86 | 6 | |
| Equity | 93×83 | 10 | |
| Essential | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Executive | 80×86 | 6 | |
| Flow | 80×75 | 5 | |
| Foundry | 80×73 | 7 | |
| Grid | Franklin Gothic Medium | 71×71 | 0 |
| Hardcover | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Horizon | 92×82 | 10 | |
| Median | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Metro | Consolas – Corbel | 80×80 | 0 |
| Module | Corbel – Corbel | 80×80 | 0 |
| Newsprint | 92×80 | 12 | |
| Opulent | 80×74 | 6 | |
| Oriel | 80×79 | 1 | |
| Origin | 80×84 | 4 | |
| Paper | 80×75 | 5 | |
| Perspective | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Pushpin | Constantia – Franklin Gothic Book | 71×71 | 0 |
| Slipstream | 80×74 | 6 | |
| Solstice | 80×84 | 4 | |
| Technic | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Thatch | 80×77 | 3 | |
| Trek | Franklin Gothic Book | 71×71 | 0 |
| Urban | 71×70 | 1 | |
| Verve | 80×69 | 11 | |
| Waveform | 80×75 | 5 |
