Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Printing Selected Worksheets.

Printing Selected Worksheets

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 5, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


If you have a lot of workbooks that have accumulated over the years, you may have a need to print some of the worksheets out of each of them. For instance, you might have a folder that contains a workbook for each of your company's divisions for the previous decade. If your company has eight divisions, that means you have 80 workbooks in the folder. Now, if you need to print the second-quarter and third-quarter figures (from the second and third worksheets out of each workbook), you start to see the problem. Loading each workbook and then printing selected sheets could take a huge amount of time.

A quicker way is to create a macro that will do the printing for you. The following macro starts by asking you for a directory path. Provided that you specify a path, the macro then starts to load each XLS (Excel) file in the directory, and then print the second and third worksheet from each one. Once printed, the worksheet is closed.

Public Sub PrintWorkbooks()
    Dim sCurFile As String
    Dim sPath As String

    'Get the path
    sPath = InputBox("Starting path?", "PrintWorkbooks")
    If sPath <> "" Then
        On Error Resume Next
        Application.ScreenUpdating = False
        If Right(sPath, 1) <> "\" Then
            sPath = sPath & "\"
        End If
        sCurFile = Dir(sPath & "*.xls", vbNormal)
        Do While Len(sCurFile) <> 0
            Workbooks.Open sPath & sCurFile, , True
            With Workbooks(sCurFile)
                .Worksheets(2).PrintOut
                .Worksheets(3).PrintOut
                .Close SaveChanges:=False
            End With
            sCurFile = Dir
            DoEvents
        Loop
        Application.ScreenUpdating = True
        On Error GoTo 0
    End If
End Sub

Obviously, if you have quite a few workbooks in the directory, printing could take quite some time. You may want to find some time when you have nothing else to do, and then just let the macro start running.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the ExcelTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2215) 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: Printing Selected Worksheets.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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