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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 workbook to print
and more you'll find everything you need
in the backstage view under print 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 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 my workbook so we can
review how these options work a
worksheet is considered active when it's
selected like my 2012 worksheet is
selected now to print more than one
worksheet but not the entire workbook
just hold ctrl on your keyboard while
you click the sheets you want now Excel
will print the worksheets for 2010 2011
and 2012 but that's not what I want the
data I'm after is more specific the
sales records for the top 20 salespeople
in 2013 I've already sorted that
information from largest to smallest and
March the top 20 with a gold star we
don't want to print the entire worksheet
because that would include more data
than we need
why don't we print a selection instead
start by selecting the data you want to
print including your header row if you
have one then go 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 to print
selection now only my current selection
appears on the printout the top 20
salespeople for 2013 I do see some other
things I'd like to address now starting
with the way the data fits on the
printout right now the last column is
getting cut off because there isn't
enough room on page one we can probably
fix that by adjusting the scaling of the
work
just open the menu here and you'll find
several different options to choose from
if we choose fit sheet on one page Excel
will shrink the printout to just the
right size so it fits on a single sheet
of paper
this can be a great way to condense your
worksheet but be aware that the text
will become harder to read the more you
scale it down
I think I'll switch back to no scaling
and to make the data fit I'll adjust the
margins instead you can use the menu
here to choose one of the predefined
sizes or you can click the show margins
button in the bottom right corner of
your preview this feature makes it easy
to customize your margins using the
guides you see here I'm just going to
make them a little narrower by clicking
and dragging and now we can see all
eight columns without scaling the size
of the worksheet there is still several
other options in the print pane that let
you control collating orientation and
paper size but I think I'm happy with my
worksheet the way it is when you're
ready go ahead and click the print
button at the very top of the pane now
you just have to wait for your worksheet
to finish printing
you