Finicky picture behavior

[Thorax 48]

Hey all, I'm experiencing a weird issue with InDesign. Okay, here goes.

So I have an excel file with a picture in it. I cut and paste the picture from said excel file to InDesign. The picture is really big which is fine as I was worried it would be low res when I pasted. I then proceed to scale it down and place it where I want it. It previews in InDesign just fine and prints out just fine, as well. I continue to do this with some other excel pictures from the same spreadsheet.

However, there are some pictures that are misbehaving. I cut/paste/scale down/place into InDesign, and they preview just right like all the other pictures that worked. However, when I go to print the pictures, they print out looking even more pixelated than when I'm previewing them with the typical display!!!

Can anyone give any insight as to what's going on here, and how I can correct this?

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Rather than embedding the images, have you tried linking them?

So, copy and paste into PS, save, and then in InDesign bring them in via file>place.

As to why particular files are misbehaving, there could be a lot of reasons. First inclanation would be that you are seeing the image preview on screen rather than the image itself, so scaling that down would "appear" to increase resolution but the printer is using the actual image rather than the preview to print from. But it's anybody's guess.