Topic: Printing

The following are additional topics related to the category listed above. A bracketed number after the topic indicates how many articles are related to that subject.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Adjusting Comment Printouts Need to print out the comments in a worksheet, but you don’t want the standard preface information Excel provides with each comment? You can copy the comments (without the name and colon) to a new worksheet using the technique in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Automatically Printing a Range If you want to automatically print a particular area of your worksheet at a specific time of day, you’ll love this tip. With the use of two small macros, you can get just the automatic output you need. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Changing Orientations within a Single Printout Excel allows you to print out information in either portrait or landscape orientation, but what if you need both types of orientation in a single workbook? It’s easier than you might think! Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Collating Copies When you print worksheets in Excel, you can choose to collate the printed pages or not collate them. If you are only printing a single sheet of paper, this may not be that big of a concern. However, the collation setting, described in this tip, can have a big impact on printing multiple copies of multi-page worksheets. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Conditional Printing If you need to make what Excel prints be based upon conditions in a worksheet, you’ll love the information in this tip. There are a variety of ways you can approach the task and get just what you need. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Disabling Printing Don’t want your worksheets to be printed out? You can make it a bit harder to get a printout by applying the techniques in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Fitting Your Printout on a Page Want to make sure that your entire printout fits on a single page or a specific number of pages? This tip shows how easy this is. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Hiding Errors on Printouts If there are error values in a worksheet, you may not want those error values to appear on a printout. Excel actually allows you to specify how those error values are handled. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Massive Printouts Sometimes printing a worksheet can result in more paper ejecting from your printer than what you bargained for. This tip explains the most common reason for blank pages on printouts and how you can fix it. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Non-Printing Controls Excel allows you to create all sorts of form-based controls in a worksheet. The problem is, the controls can mess up the appearance of your printout. This tip explains how you can suppress the printing of forms controls to get just the appearance you need. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Out of Kilter Borders Borders not printing properly? It could be any one of a number of reasons causing the problem. This tip provides some guidance on what you can do to correct the situation. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Preventing Printing Want to prevent your worksheet from being printed? You may be out of luck, as a determined person may be able to find a way to do what you don’t want. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Print Quantity is Stuck When you display the Print dialog box, the number of copies to be printed should default to one. If this does not happen (there is some other value in the Copies field), then this tip provides some things you can check out. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing a Draft of a Worksheet Worksheets are more than just numbers. You can include graphics and all sorts of information. When it comes to printing your worksheet, that additional information may not be necessary in the printout. You can limit what is printed (and speed up your printout) by printing a draft of your worksheet. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing a Number of Different Pages If you don’t need to print an entire workbook, it can be confusing to figure out how to print just certain pages. This tip explains your options and shows you how to get just what you want. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing a Portion of a Worksheet When printing the data in a worksheet, you are not limited to printing the entire worksheet. Instead, you can print just a portion of the worksheet. All you need to do is make one small change in the Print dialog box, as described in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing a Range of Pages It is easy for a worksheet to get so large that a printout requires multiple pages. If you don’t want to print all those pages, you can specify exactly which pages you do want to print by adjusting the controls in the Print dialog box. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing a Short Selection Excel doesn’t force you to print an entire worksheet when you choose to print. Instead, you can print only what you have selected on the screen. This tip explains how. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing a Worksheet List Want a quick way to create a list of worksheets in a workbook? Here’s a super-fast method using a simple little macro. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing All or Nothing Want to make sure that when you worksheet is printed that everything in the workbook is really printed? You can accomplish this with an easy macro. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing an Entire Workbook by Default Need to print an entire workbook? It’s as easy as adding a single line of code to your macros. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing Comments Excel allows you to add comments to cells. At some point you may want to print out those comments, along with your worksheet. Doing so is easy, provided you know the setting to change. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing Limited Pages from a Range of Worksheets If you only want to print a couple of pages from a large number of worksheets, you may be out of luck. Excel just doesn’t make it that easy to do. You can, however, use a simple macro that will do the printing for you. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing More Than One Copy When it comes time to print your worksheet, you may need more than one copy. If you use the Print tool, you’ll only get one; to get more than one you’ll need to use the Print dialog box, as described in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing Multiple Pages On a Piece of Paper If you want to save paper on a printout, you might consider printing multiple pages on a single piece of paper. This can be done by using the capabilities of your printer, as described in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing Multiple Worksheets on a Single Page Do you want to “condense” how Excel prints a workbook so less paper is used? This tip describes a couple of things you can do to get the desired results. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing Only Non-Blank Worksheets If you have a workbook containing many worksheets, you might want to print only those worksheets that have some sort of “flag” set, such as a value in a particular cell. This can be done relatively easily by using a macro to do the printing, as discussed in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing Only Selected Pages Only want to print a part of your worksheet? Excel allows you to specify specific pages you want to print. This tip explains how you do this. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing Selected Worksheets Need to print just a few worksheets out of a group of workbooks? There’s no need to manually load each workbook and print the sheets; instead you can use the macro presented in this tip. It allows you to print selected worksheets from each workbook in a particular folder. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing to a Disk File It never fails—there is one person in every office who has the best printer in the world, while you get the hand-me-downs. You can still take advantage of that awesome printer by printing to a file and then sending the file to that person’s printer. This tip explains how you can do that very easily. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Printing without Opening Need to print out a worksheet? Chances are good that you can do it without even starting up Excel. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printing Workbook Properties When you take a look at the Properties dialog box associated with any workbook, you’ll notice that Excel tracks quite a bit of information about the workbook itself. This tip shows how you can get this property information into a worksheet so you can print it out. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Printout Doesn't Match Display for Some Cells Despite your best efforts, it is possible to print a workbook in Excel that differs in sometimes critical ways from what you see on the screen. This tip explains one such common problem and how you can deal with it. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Protecting Print Settings Need to have your print settings always be a certain way? Tired of resetting the settings after others use the workbook or your system? Here’s how you can make sure that the printer settings are always just as you want. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Repeating Rows at the Bottom of a Page Excel allows you to repeat rows at the top of every page of a printout. If you want to repeat rows at the bottom of every page, there is no easy way to perform the task, but there are some workarounds. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Repeating Rows on a Printout Except On the Last Page When setting up a worksheet for printing, you can specify that Excel repeat some of your rows at the top of each page printed. If you want to have the repeating occur on every page except the last, then you will need to use a macro to do the printing. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Selecting a Paper Size Does your printer use more than just letter-size or A4 paper? If so, then Excel can also format your output for use on those different paper sizes. This tip explains how you instruct Excel to use different sizes of paper. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Selecting a Paper Source When you print a worksheet, you may want to specify that the printout be done on a particular paper tray in a particular printer. This tip will help you figure out how to do that with your printer. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Setting Print Quality Excel can take advantage of different print quality settings that may be available in your printer driver. (This comes in handy when you want to print text in lower quality and charts in higher quality.) This tip explains how you can change the quality setting. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Setting Print Ranges for Multiple Worksheets Setting a print range for a worksheet is easy. What is more difficult is if you need to set print ranges for multiple worksheets in the same workbook. Excel doesn’t provide a way to do this in one step, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it—as described in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Setting Print Titles Want some of the rows or columns in your worksheet to repeat on each page of your printout? Using the controls in the Page Setup dialog box, you can specify exactly what you want repeated. This tip explains how. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Setting Up Your Printer Printers have many capabilities that you can take advantage of in Excel, if you just know how. This tip explains how to access all the features of a printer through the printer’s driver interface. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Shading Rows for Ease in Reading Output Shading every second, third, or fifth row of a printout can be helpful for reading data. This tip describes how to use a macro to get the formatting you desire. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Showing Filter Criteria on a Printout When you print out a filtered worksheet, you may want some sort of printed record as to what filtering was applied to the worksheet. Here’s a couple of ways you can get that printed record. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Specifying a Paper Tray in a Macro Different printers have different capabilities. One common option on printers is a multitude of paper trays. Specifying which paper tray that Excel should use for printing is next to impossible to do, but the ideas in this tip can help achieve your desired results. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Specifying a Print Tray for a Worksheet It is not uncommon for modern printers, particularly those in offices, to have several different paper trays available. Accessing those paper trays in Excel is not always straightforward, particularly if you want to use multiple print trays in the same print job. This tip discusses some options you can try. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Specifying an Order for Page Printing When printing a multi-page worksheet, you may want your pages to print in a particular order. Excel allows you to specify whether they should print left to right or top to bottom, as described in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Specifying Print Quantity in a Cell If you want to have a user specify a print quantity in a cell, you can easily pull that information into a macro and use it to do the actual printing. This tip examines a couple of techniques you can use to get the desired outcome. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Speeding Up Printing Changing the print setting can speed up the printing of your Excel worksheet. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Using Duplex Printing Duplexing is the printing of information on both sides of a sheet of paper. Many printers will handle duplexing automatically, but you need to instruct Excel to take advantage of the feature. This is done by adjusting the properties of the printer itself, as described in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Using Less Paper on Printouts When you print out your worksheet, is your output all bunched to the left of the paper, with a lot of white space at the right? You can use less paper if you apply some of the ideas described in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Using Multiple Print Settings If you routinely print different parts of your worksheet, you know that it is a pain to repeatedly set the print area and print. This tip presents two ways you can get around this pain, one involving a macro and one not. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

Working With Multiple Printers If you have multiple printers attached to (or available from) your system, you can print to any of them using Excel. For a quick way to switch printers, use the short macro introduced in this tip. Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

More Topics

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

Macros Rock!

Helpful Links

Great Info!

RSS Feeds