10 Minute Guide to Excel for Windows 95

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Printing Your Workbook

In this lesson, you will learn how to print an entire workbook or only a portion of it.

Changing the Page Setup

A workbook is a collection of many worksheets, like pages in a notebook. You can print the whole notebook at once, or just one or more pages at a time. Before you print a worksheet, you should make sure that the page is set up correctly for printing. To do this, open the File menu and choose Page Setup. You'll see the Page Setup dialog box, as shown in Figure 8.1.


Windows 95: Right-Click on the Workbook Title Bar For quick access to commands that affect a workbook in Excel for Windows 95, right-click on the workbook's title bar, if the workbook appears in a window (not maximized).

If the workbook is maximized to a full screen, right-click on the menu bar to access the shortcut menu. For example, to check the page setup, right-click on the title bar or menu bar, and choose Page Setup. This shortcut menu is not available in Excel 5. Enter your page setup settings as follows:

Page tab

Orientation Select Portrait to print from left to right across a page or Landscape to print from top to bottom on a page. (Landscape makes the page wider than it is tall.)

Scaling You can reduce and enlarge your workbook or force it to fit within a specific page size (see Lesson 9).

Paper Size This is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, by default. You can choose a different size from the list.

Print Quality You can print a draft of your spreadsheet to print quickly and save wear and tear on your printer, or you can print in high quality for a final copy. Print quality is measured in dpi (dots per inch)--the higher the number, the better the print.

First Page Number You can set the starting page number to something other than 1. The Auto option (default) tells Excel to set the starting page number to 1 if it is the first page in the print job, or set the first page number at the next sequential number if it is not the first page in the print job.

Figure 8.1
The Page Setup dialog box.


Margins tab

Top, Bottom, Left, Right You can adjust the size of the top, bottom, left, and right margins.

From Edge You can specify how far you want a Header or Footer printed from the edge of the page. (You use the Header/Footer tab to add a header or footer to your workbook.)

Center on Page You can center the printing between the left and right margins (Horizontally) and between the top and bottom margins (Vertically).

Header/Footer tab

Header/Footer You can add a header (such as a title, which repeats at the top of each page) or a footer (such as page numbers, which repeat at the bottom of each page). See Lesson 9 for more information on headers and footers.

Custom Header/Custom Footer You can choose the Custom Header or Custom Footer button to create headers and footers that insert the time, date, worksheet tab name, and workbook file name.

Sheet tab

Print Area You can print a portion of a workbook or worksheet by entering the range of cells you want to print. You can type the range, or drag the Page Setup dialog box out of the way and drag the mouse pointer over the desired cells (see Lesson 9). If you do not select a print area, Excel will print either the sheet or the workbook depending on the options set in the Page tab.

Print Titles If you have a row or column of entries that you want repeated as titles on every page, type the range for this row or column, or drag over the cells with the mouse pointer (see Lesson 9).

Print You can tell Excel exactly how to print some aspects of the workbook. For example, you can have the gridlines (the lines that define the cells) printed. You can also have a color spreadsheet printed in black-and-white.

Page Order You can indicate how data in the worksheet should be read and printed: in sections from top to bottom or in sections from left to right. This is the way Excel handles printing the areas outside the printable area. For example, if some columns to the right don't fit on the first page and some rows don't fit at the bottom of the first page, you can specify which area will print next. When you are done entering your settings, click on the OK button.

Previewing a Print Job

After you've determined your page setup and print area, you can preview what the printed page will look like before you print. To preview a print job, open the File menu and select Print Preview, or click on the Print Preview button in the Standard toolbar. Your workbook appears as it will when printed, as shown in Figure 8.2.


Timesaver Tip: Page Setup Print Preview You can also preview a print job when you are setting up a page or while you are in the Print dialog box. When the Page Setup dialog box is displayed, click on the Print Preview button. In the Print dialog box, click on the Preview button.


Timesaver Tip: A Close-Up View Zoom in on any area of the preview by clicking on it with the mouse pointer (which looks like a magnifying glass). You can also use the Zoom button at the top of the Print Preview screen.

Printing Your Workbook

After setting the page setup and previewing your data, it is time to print. You can print selected data, selected sheets, or the entire workbook.

Figure 8.2
You can preview your workbook before printing it.
To print your workbook:

1. If you want to print a portion of the worksheet, select the range you want to print (see Lesson 10). If you want to print one or more sheets within the workbook, select the sheet tabs. To print the entire workbook, you don't select anything in the workbook.

2. Open the File menu, and select Print (or press Ctrl+P). The Print dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 8.3.

3. Select the options you would like to use:

3. Click on OK, or press Enter.

Figure 8.3
The Print dialog box.


Windows 95: Printing Gridlines By default Excel for Windows 95 does not print the gridlines (the lines that define the cells). However, you may want to separate the cells in your worksheet with gridlines. To do so, click in the Gridlines check box under the Print options in the Sheet tab. When you print your worksheet, you will see your worksheet data in grids on white paper. In Excel 5 and earlier versions of Excel, the gridlines always printed by default.


Timesaver Tip: Quick Print To print one copy of all the data in a workbook using the default page setup settings, click on the Print button in the Standard toolbar. Excel bypasses the Print dialog box and immediately starts printing the workbook.

In this lesson, you learned how to print all or part of your workbook. In the next lesson, you will learn how to print large worksheets.


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