Excel 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 workbook to print, and more.
If you're familiar with Excel 2007, it might look like the Print Preview mode is missing.
Not so.
Just go to the Backstage view, and you'll find everything has been combined under Print,
where you can adjust your settings, see a preview, and print your workbook all in one
place.
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 my workbook for a minute so we can take a look a what these options
mean.
A worksheet is considered active if it's selected, like my 2010 worksheet is selected now.
To print multiple worksheets, just press hold Ctrl on your keyboard while you click the
other sheets that you'd like to make active.
Now Excel will print the worksheets for 2008, 2009, and 2010.
But that's not what I want.
The data I'm after is more specific: the sales records for the top 40 sales people in 2010.
I've already sorted that information from largest to smallest and marked the top 40
with a gold star.
How do we go about printing it?
We'll use the option to print only the current selection.
First, you'll need to select the data you want to print, including your header row.
Now go back to the Print pane in the Backstage view.
Keep your eye on the print preview, and notice how the print area changes when we switch
from Print Active Pages to Print Selection.
Now only my current selection will be on the printout - the top 40 sales people for 2010.
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 when 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 Sheet on One Page from the drop-down menu.
This automatically shrinks your printout so the whole thing fits on a single sheet of
paper.
I'm going to stick with No Scaling, and then take a closer look at how Excel is handling
the data.
There's enough of it here that the last couple of rows have to be listed on a separate page,
and the months have been split up too.
That's not a problem - the printout will be nice and easy to read once we add column and
row headings to each page, also known as Print Titles.
For example, it would help to know what months these figures are for and the employees that
they belong to.
All you have to do is go to the Page Layout tab, and click the Print Titles command.
See the field for "Rows to repeat at the top"?
Click the icon beside it, and your mouse becomes a selection arrow.
Now just click the rows you want to appear at the top of each printed page.
Click the icon again to go back to the dialog box, and do the same for your columns if you
have any you'd like to repeat.
In my case, I want the employees' names to appear on every page.
Click OK, and we'll be able to confirm the change once we get back to the Print pane.
But there's one more thing I'd like to adjust while I'm here.
Remember how the last couple of 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 couple of rows, I want the data to
be divided evenly - 20 people on each page.
To do this, I'm going to insert a page break.
Just click the row below where you want the break to happen.
Now go up to the Breaks command, and choose Insert Page Break.
Now we can confirm our Print Titles - and the fact that that the break appears in the
right place - by selecting our top 40 again, and going back to the Print pane.
So here's page 1… and page 2.
Fantastic!
It split up the data exactly how I wanted it.
We can also see our Print Titles now too.
The header row and column of names that we specified appear on every page of the printout.
I'm almost ready to print.
The very last thing I want to do is adjust the margins.
Right now, my print area can only fit 5 months per page, and I want to fit 6.
Just click the Show Margins button in the bottom right corner of your preview, and you
can easily adjust the margins without even leaving the print pane.
Let's make these a little narrower.
Perfect!
Now I'm ready to print.
All you have to do is click the button, and the data you've prepared will be printed - exactly
how it looked in the preview.