In this lesson you learn about the many aspects involved in printing a large worksheet.
You can tell Excel what part of the worksheet you want to print using the Print Area option of the Page Setup dialog box. This option lets you single out an area as a separate page and then print that page. If the area is too large to fit onto one page, Excel will break it into multiple pages. 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. To select a print area:
Figure 9.1
Selecting a print area.
Panic Button: To Include or Not To Include? To help you determine what shouldn't be part of the print area, be sure not to include the title, subtitle, and column and row headings in the print area. If you do, Excel will print the labels twice.
Panic Button: Remove the Print Area To remove the print area, delete the cell coordinates in the Print Area text box.
When you print a workbook, Excel determines the page breaks based on the paper size and margins and the selected print area. To make the pages look better and break things in logical places, you may want to override the automatic page breaks with your own breaks. However, before you add page breaks, try these options:
If after trying these options you still want to insert page breaks, first determine whether you need to limit the number of columns on a page or the number of rows.
To limit the number of columns:
To limit the number of rows:
Timesaver Tip: One Step Page Breaks You can set the lower right corner of a workbook in one step. Select the cell that is below and to the right of the last cell for the page, and then open the Insert menu, and select Page Break. For example, if you wanted cell G12 to be the last cell on that page, move to cell H13, and set the page break.
Panic Button: Remove a Page Break To remove a page break, move to the cell that you used to set the page break, open the Insert menu, and choose Remove Page Break.
Excel provides a way for you to select labels and titles that are located on the top edge and left side of your large worksheet, and print them on every page of the printout. This option is useful when a worksheet is too wide to print on a single page. The extra columns will be printed on subsequent pages without any descriptive information unless you use the Repeat Rows at Top and Repeat Columns at Left options in the Page Setup dialog box. When you specify the column and row headings, Excel divides the worksheet into sections, showing dashed borders around the column and row headings you want to repeat. Figure 9.2 shows a worksheet after you specify the column and row headings.
To print column and row headings on every page:
Figure 9.2
Repeating column and row headings on every page.
Panic Button: Remove the Rows and Columns You Want to Repeat To remove the rows and columns you want to repeat, delete the cell coordinates in the Rows to Repeat at Top and Columns to Repeat at Left text boxes.
Figure 9.3
Specifying column and row headings with Sheet Options.
Excel lets you add headers and footers to print information at the top and bottom of every page of the printout. The information can include any text, page numbers, the current date and time, the workbook file name, and the worksheet tab name. You can choose the headers and footers suggested by Excel, or you can include any text plus special commands to control the appearance of the header or footer. For example, you can apply bold, italic, or underline to the header or footer text (see Lesson 17). You can also left-align, center, or right-align your text in a header or footer (see Lesson 16).
To add headers and footers:
Figure 9.4
Adding headers and footers with Header/Footer options.
Panic Button: Don't Want Any Headers or Footers? To remove the header and footer, choose None in the Header and Footer suggestions lists.
If your worksheet is still too large to print on one page after you change the orientation and margins, you might consider using the Fit To option. This option shrinks the worksheet to fit on the specified number of pages. You can specify the document's width and height. To scale a worksheet to fit on a page:
Timesaver Tip: Quickly Adjust You can reduce or enlarge the printout using the Adjust To option in the Page tab in the Page Setup dialog box. Some printers will let you reduce or enlarge the printout as it prints. Although 100% is normal size, you can enter the desired reduction or enlargement percentage you want (10% to 400%).
Figure 9.5
Scaling a worksheet to fit on the specified number of pages with Page options.
In this lesson, you learned how to print a large worksheet. In the next lesson, you
will learn how to work with ranges.
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