"Printing in black and white On black-and-white printers, Microsoft Excel
prints colors as gray shades. You can reduce the amount of time it takes
Excel to print a worksheet that contains colors by printing colors in black
and white. When you print a worksheet by using only black and white, Excel
prints fonts and borders formatted in color as black, not as gray shades.
Excel also prints cell and AutoShape backgrounds as white and prints other
graphics and charts in shades of gray."
This seems to contradict you have.