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workbooks can be used completely
electronically but sometimes you need to
print them too it's important to
understand the basics of printing plus
the other things you have control over
like what parts of the worksheet to
print and more you'll find everything
you need in the backstage view in the
print pane here you can adjust your
settings see a preview and print your
workbook all in one place now you could
just enter the number of copies you want
and then click the print button right
away but if you want more control over
the finished product you might want to
take a look at the options below if your
workbook contains multiple sheets the
first thing you'll need to do is decide
whether to print only the active sheets
which is the default print method or the
entire workbook you can also narrow it
down to just your current selection
let's go back to our workbook so we can
review how these options work a
worksheet is considered active when it's
selected like the central sheet is
selected now to print more than one
worksheet but not the entire workbook
just hold ctrl on your keyboard while
you select the sheets you want now Excel
will print the sales figures for the
West Coast East Coast and central
offices however that's not quite what I
want the data I'm after is more specific
the sales records for the top 40
salespeople at the central office as you
can see I've already sorted that data
from largest to smallest and marked the
top 40 with a gold star we don't want to
print the entire worksheet because that
would include more data than we need
instead why don't we print just a
selection start by selecting the data
you want including your header row if
you have one then navigate back to the
print pane in the backstage view watch
the preview closely and you'll notice it
changes when we switch from print active
sheets down to print selection now only
my current selection appears on the
printout the top 40 salespeople for the
central office as an alternative you can
create a permanent selection using the
print area command you'll find it on the
page Layout tab
just select your data then choose set
print area from the menu if you change
your mind or no longer need it choose
clear to remove it
I do see some other things I'd like to
address now starting with the page
orientation our current orientation is
portrait or vertical a good choice if
your goal is to fit more rows on each
page I'd like to switch to landscape or
horizontal so I can fit more columns
instead another option is to go to
scaling and choose fit all columns on
one page this automatically shrinks your
printout so every column fits on a
single sheet of paper this can be a
great way to condense your content but
it just depends on the worksheet if you
have a lot of data it can make it
difficult to read
I think I'll switch back to no scaling
then take a closer look at how the data
is being arranged there's enough of it
here that the last few rows have to be
listed on a separate page the next two
pages are also lacking some context
luckily we can repeat important data
like the header row using a feature
called print titles that way we'll know
who these figures belong to and what
months therefore all you have to do is
go to the page Layout tab and then click
the print titles command next click the
button beside the range you want to
repeat you can choose either rows or
columns the dialog box will collapse and
your cursor will turn into a selection
arrow from here select the data you want
to repeat in this example row 1 then
click the button to go back do the same
for your columns if you have any that
you want to include I'm going to go
ahead and select the first column with
all the employees names when you're done
click OK and we'll be able to confirm
the change once we get back to the print
pane there's one more thing I'd like to
adjust while I'm here remember how the
last few rows had to be put on a
separate page because there wasn't
enough room I'd like a little more
control over that instead of the last
few rows I want the data to be divided
evenly 20 people on each page to do this
I'm going to switch to page break
preview mode using the button in the
bottom right corner this makes it easier
to see your page breaks so you can
adjust them as needed
you have to do is click and drag the
blue dotted line then release where you
want the page break to go let's go back
to the print pane where we can see the
changes have taken effect the data is
now divided evenly on each page and the
print titles make it much easier to
follow as you can see the total column
is the only thing that didn't make it on
to the previous page I bet we could fix
that by making the margins a little
smaller you can adjust your margins
manually using the button in the bottom
right corner or you can choose a preset
from the margins menu I think the narrow
option should give us just enough room
perfect now I'm ready to print at this
point all you have to do is click the
print button and Excel will print your
data exactly as it appeared in the
preview
you