Automatically Printing a Range

If you are automating your office using Excel, you may wonder if there is a way to automatically print the contents of a cell range at a given time each day. For instance, you might have a workbook that is always open, logging input from a different program. At a particular time each day you may want to automatically print a range that contains summary information.

There are a couple of approaches you could use to this problem, including using Windows Scripting to handle the printing. However, since the workbook is always open, you don't have to resort to that. Instead, you can rely on the native macro capabilities of Excel.

The solution considered here requires two macros. The first is one that runs whenever the workbook is first opened. It sets up the correct event handler to trigger the actual macro that does the printing.

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
    'Schedule the printing
    Application.OnTime TimeValue("17:00:00"), "PrintMe"
End Sub

This particular marco sets the OnTime method to be triggered whenever 5:00 p.m. is reached. To specify a different time of day, simply change the time (using 24-hour notation) in the macro. When 5:00 p.m. rolls around, Excel will run the PrintMe macro:

Private Sub PrintMe()
    Sheets(2).PrintOut
    'Reschedule the printing
    Application.OnTime TimeValue("17:00:00"), "PrintMe"
End Sub

This macro does nothing but print the second sheet in the workbook (which should contain the summary info you want printed) and then reset the OnTime method to again be triggered at 5:00 p.m. the next day. If you want a different data range to be printed, simply change the object used with the PrintOut method in the first line of the macro.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (1977) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Automatically Printing a Range.