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 info 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 print 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 they're for.
All you have to do is go to the Page Layout tab... and then click the Print Titles command.
Next, click the button beside to 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 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. All 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 onto 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.