Excel worksheets can cover a large range of cells and when printing, you may not want to print that entire area. Excel allows you to define and work in a print area to avoid this issue. Check out these articles to learn how you can adjust Excel's print area and find answers to the questions you may have along the way.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

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

   Adding the Set Print Area Tool
Spend a lot of time defining print areas in your workbooks? You might benefit by adding a Set Print Area tool that makes defining print areas a snap.

   Centering Your Worksheet
Got just a small amount of worksheet data to print out? It might look better on the printed page if you center it. Excel makes it easy, both vertically and horizontally.

   Clearing the Print Area
Excel allows you to specify which portions of a worksheet should be printed when you send output to your printer. If you want to get rid of a defined print area, there are a couple of ways you can do it.

   Copying Print Areas when Copying Worksheets
Print areas are a great way to define what, exactly, you want to print from a worksheet. When you copy worksheets, the print areas are normally copied. However, the way that you create your copy can have an effect on whether they are copied or not.

   Locking the Print Area
Excel allows you to specify an area of your worksheet that should be printed. Here's how to "lock" that area so it cannot be changed.

   Multiple Print Areas on a Single Printed Page
Want to print small, non-contiguous areas of your worksheet all on a single page? You might think that defining a non-contiguous print area is the key to doing this. Excel has different ideas, however, about what should print.

   Printing a Single Column in Multiple Columns
Ever printed out a worksheet only to find that you have text only at the left side of each page? You can use more of each printed page by applying the techniques in this tip.

   Printing Columns and Rows
If you want to print just the contents of a number of rows and columns, it can be challenging to get the output you want. Here are some ideas on how to limit what is printed to just what you need.

   Printing Just the Visible Data
In a large worksheet, you may want to display and print just a portion of the available data. Displaying the desired information is easy; printing it is a bit trickier. This tip discusses how you can approach the problem of printing only what you've displayed on the screen.

   Printing Multiple Selections
Need to print several portions of a worksheet all on a single piece of paper? Here's an easy way you can get what you need using just cut and paste.

   Printing Multiple Worksheet Ranges
Need to print more than one portion of your worksheet? If you use named ranges for the different ranges you want to print, you can apply the technique in tip to print whatever named ranges you want.

   Setting Header/Footer Margins
Do you find that there is a lot of extra space around that data on your worksheet when it is printed? Changing the margins in Excel is easy, and might cut down on how much paper you use.

   Setting the Print Area
Many people, when they print a worksheet, print the entire thing. You don't have to, however. You can specify that Excel print only a portion of a worksheet by designating a print area, as described in this tip.