Changing Page Number Format

When you print a worksheet, you can have Excel include a variety of items in the header or footer of the printout. One of the things you can include is the page number of the page being printed. This page number is pretty mundane—it is the Arabic value of the page being printed, as in 1, 2, 3, etc.

Some people may long for a way to print page letters (A, B, C) instead of page numbers (1, 2, 3). There is no intrinsic way to do this in Excel. You can, however, develop a macro that will figure out the letter that should be associated with a page, and then use that letter in the footer. The following macro does just that:

Sub LetterPageNums()
    Dim sArr(27 * 26) As String
    Dim iPages As Integer
    Dim J As Integer, K As Integer

    ' Fill page letter array
    ' "A", "B", "C", ...,"AA", "AB", etc.
    For J = 0 To 26
        For K = 1 To 26
            If J > 0 Then
                sArr((J * 26) + K) = Chr(J + 64) & Chr(K + 64)
            Else
                sArr(K) = Chr(K + 64)
            End If
        Next K
    Next J

    ' Get count of pages in active sheet
    iPages = ExecuteExcel4Macro("Get.Document(50)")

    ' Print worksheet, page by page
    With ActiveSheet
        For J = 1 To iPages
            ' Set page letter
            .PageSetup.CenterFooter = sArr(J)
            ' Print page(J)
            .PrintOut From:=J, To:=J
        Next J
    End With
End Sub

First, the macro figures out the letter equivalent of pages numbers and puts them in an array. In this case, up to 702 page letters are calculated, which should be more than enough for any print job. The letters are A through Z, then AA through AZ, BA through BZ, and all the way up to ZA through ZZ.

Then, iPages is set to the number of pages in the worksheet. Finally, each page is individually printed, with the page letter being placed into the center footer of the worksheet. If you want the page letter in some different place, use .LeftFooter or .RightFooter instead of the .CenterFooter property. (You can also use .LeftHeader, .CenterHeader, and .RightHeader, if desired.)

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2126) 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: Changing Page Number Format.