Well,you could tally up the .columnwidths, and compare against an acceptable value. You could do that in BeforePrint. If there is a problem, set cancel to true, msgbox user, tell them to adjust columns and try again.
You could protect the sheet against column adjustments. Perhaps you WANT the users to have that freedom, I think that's wonderful on your part, going out of your way to allow it. I understand (from other threads) that locking/protecting a worksheet is confusing to some. So I won't say any more about the topic.
Or, if the issue is really because the protection options of Excel 97 are getting in your way, you could leave the protection as it is, and just explicitly assign the .columnwidths in the Workbook_BeforePrint routine.
Let them play all they want, just assign columnwidths to the correct values immediately before printing.
This message was edited by stevebausch on 2002-10-14 09:46