Excel Page Setup & Printing

If you know how to print documents in Word, but haven't had much practice printing in Excel, you'll find that spreadsheets are very different. Because of the large size of a worksheet, there obviously has to be some way to tell the program just what parts of the sheet you want to print and how to get it all on one or more normal-size pieces of paper.

Click on Print in the File menu. The Print dialog box looks very much like Word's: you can choose to print a selected range, the current worksheet, or the whole workbook. In addition, you can specify whether you want to print the whole thing or a range of pages.

Unless you have set up some other options, you'll find that simply clicking on OK in this menu might produce some interesting (though not totally appreciated!) results.

Click on the Page Setup button to get to the real heart of printing in Excel. You will see four tabbed cards: Page, Margins, Header, and Sheet.

Page Tab

On the Page tab, select:

Orientation: click on the buttons to see the difference. In Portrait, the narrow edge of the page is at the top. In Landscape, the wide edge is at the top. Which you should use will depend on the layout of your table and how much of the table you need to get on a single page.

If your table has a lot of columns and you need the extra width, Landscape will work best. If it has only a few columns, try Portrait.

Scaling: Excel will, if necessary - and with your permission! - squish your data into a smaller space than it would normally require, or will enlarge it to fill a page that might otherwise look rather empty.

In the Adjust to: text box, type a new number or click on the up or down arrow to enlarge or reduce the table, much as you would enlarge or reduce a document on a copy machine. You definitely should use Print Preview in the main Print window to see the results before actually printing.

Use Fit to if you want to force a slightly too large table onto a single page. For example, if you use Print Preview and see that all but one column will fit onto a sheet, pick Fit to 1 page(s) wide by x tall to force that last column onto the same page with the rest of the table.

Excel will reduce the font size and spacing until it can fit everything on one page width. Use with caution: to include one or two small extra columns works out quite well. If you try to include too many, you might end up with a table that is difficult to read and very cluttered-looking.

Paper Size: Normally, you will probably use 8½" x 11" paper, either in portrait or landscape orientation. For a particularly wide table, you might prefer to use 8½" x 14" paper to fit an entire table on one page.

Click on the down-arrow next to the box and select a paper size.

Print Quality: Usually High. Try Medium or Draft if you are printing something just for your own use that will be discarded after proofing, etc.

First Page Number: Type in a number if you want the page numbering to begin with anything other than '1'. Normally, leave this on Auto.

Margins Tab

Top, Bottom, Left, Right: If you don't want to accept the default settings, type in new margins or use the up or down arrows (the spinners) to increase or decrease a setting.

Header and Footer: Set the amount of space between the top edge of the page and the first line of text in the header and between the last line of text and the bottom edge of the page in the footer.

Center on Page: Click on Vertical and/or Horizontal to center your table on the page. Remember to use Print Preview to see how the printed page will look.

Header/Footer Tab

On the Header/Footer tab, there are two windows which display the default header and footer. These will print on every page of your printout unless you select None from the drop-down Header and Footer lists. If you open these lists, you will see several other possibilities that you can insert on every page. Some of the choices are based on your user information (e.g., your name, if you entered it in Options on the Tools menu - select the General) tab and enter your name in the User Name: text field.

To Create a Custom Header/Footer: Click on either Custom Header… or Custom Footer… to open a window like the one shown here:

The window has three sections into which you can enter the information you want in the various parts of your header or footer. Anything entered in the left section will be aligned along the left margin. Information in the middle section will be centered; data in the right section will print right aligned - flush against the right margin.

• Click on the button with the A to change font attributes: typeface, bold, italic, font size, etc.
   
• Click on the button with the pound sign (#) to insert a page numbering field.
   
• Click on the button with the three x’s diagonally on the page icon to insert the total number of pages.

  HINT: Be sure to insert something between the page number and the total number of pages, e.g., of or a dash. If you don't, you'll get, essentially, garbage. If you are printing a 3-page document, your pages will be numbered 13, 23, and 33 instead of 1 of 3, 2 of 3, and 3 of 3.

• The 4th and 5th buttons (calendar and clock) will insert the date and time.
   
• The 6th button (with the small blue Excel symbol on a piece of paper) will insert the file name.
   
• Use the last button on the right to insert the sheet name of the active worksheet.
   

Sheet Tab

The Sheet tab might be the most important tab in the Page Setup dialog box: it's where you actually tell the program what you want to print and how to print it.

Print Area: If you know the references for the range of cells you want to print, type them in the Print Area text box. Enter the address of the upper left cell of the range, type a colon, then the address of the cell in the lower right corner of the range. For example, to print all of the cells from A1 through H203, type in A1:H203.

If you don't know the range references, click in the text box then click in the upper left cell of the range in the worksheet and drag down and right to the lower right cell of the range you want to print. The cell references will automatically be inserted into the text box.

Note: An easier way: find the lower right cell in the range, click on it, and drag up to the top left cell. If you have some idea of which cell is the last in the data range, type it into the name box and press enter. That will put you either close to or at the last cell in the range. It's faster and easier than scrolling when you're working with a large spreadsheet.

New in Excel 97

When you click in Print area: and begin to drag through the print range, the dialog box will temporarily collapse; the only thing you'll see is the Print area: field. When you stop dragging (release the mouse button), the rest of the dialog box will reappear. In effect, the dialog box 'gets out of your way' so you can see what you're doing!

Print Titles section: When you put row or column references in the Rows to Repeat at Top and/or Columns to Repeat at Left text boxes, Excel will repeat the column and/or row headings on each page, if your table prints on multiple pages.

Rows to Repeat: Click in the Rows to Repeat at Top text box and either type in the beginning and ending row numbers - with a dollar sign in front of each element - separated by a colon, or click anywhere in the row you want to repeat (click and drag if you want to repeat multiple rows). $1:$1 will repeat only the data in row 1 at the top of each printed page; $1:$3 will print rows 1 through 3 at the top of each printed page, and so forth.

(The dollar signs in the references indicate that the addresses of the rows or columns referred to are absolute cell addresses. For more information, look in Excel Help for absolute and relative cell addressing.)