Excel.Tips.Net Welcome toExcel.Tips.Net

Helpful Links

Tips.Net Home
ExcelTips Home
Ask an Excel Question
Make a Comment

Tips.Net Store

ExcelTips FAQ
ExcelTips Premium

Learn Access Now
Free Printable Forms

Beauty Tips
Car Tips
Cleaning Tips
College Tips
Cooking Tips
Excel2007 Tips
ExcelTips
Family Tips
Gardening Tips
Health Tips
Home Tips
Legal Tips
Money Tips
Organizing Tips
Pest Tips
Pet Tips
Wedding Tips
Word2007 Tips
WordTips

Advertise on the
ExcelTips Site

Newest Tips

Recording a Macro

Adding a Little Animation to Your Life

Converting a Range of URLs to Hyperlinks

Making the Formula Bar Persistent

Engineering Calculations

Digital Signatures for Macros

Fixing the Decimal Point

 

Fitting Your Printout on a Page

Summary: 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. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

I can't tell you how many times I have gone to print a worksheet, only to have the very last column or the very last row spill over onto another page. This not only wastes paper, but it is very frustrating.

To get around this, Excel has a handy scaling feature that allows you to specify how many pages you want your printed output to occupy. You set the page dimensions, and Excel shrinks everything down so it fits in the specified area. To take advantage of this feature, follow these steps:

  1. Set up your worksheet as desired.
  2. Choose Page Setup from the File menu. Excel displays the Page Setup dialog box. (To display the Page Setup dialog box in Excel 2007, display the Page Layout tab of the ribbon, and then click the small icon at the bottom-right of the Page Setup group.)
  3. Make sure the Page tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
  4. Select the Fit To option and use the associated controls to specify how many pages you want the output to occupy.
  5. Click on OK.
  6. Print your worksheet as normal.

One of the tricks I often use is to set the Fit To controls to 1 page wide by 99 pages tall. In this way, I am sure the output will fit on one page across. Since my output isn't over 99 pages in length, no shrinking is done on this dimension. I end up with output that is 1 page wide by how ever many pages long Excel needs to print.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3033) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Tame Your Data! ExcelTips: Filters and Filtering provides all the details necessary to let you manage large sets of data with confidence and ease. Its information-packed pages demonstrate how to use the two types of filters provided by Excel: AutoFilters and advanced filters.
 
Check out ExcelTips: Filters and Filtering today!