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: Scaling Your Printing.

Scaling Your Printing

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated August 25, 2018)

Worksheets can get very big, very fast. Often you want to still print an entire worksheet in a single sheet of paper. Excel makes this easy to do by using scaling. All you need to do is 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.
  3. Make sure the Page tab is selected. (See Figure 1.) (It is the left-most tab and should be displayed by default unless you've recently viewed a different tab in the Page Setup dialog box.)

    4. Figure 1. The Page tab of the Page Setup dialog box.

  4. In the scaling area, specify how you want your output scaled. Excel allows you to set scaling at any value between 10 percent and 400 percent of normal size. (The results of scaling to a certain percentage will depend on the quality and capabilities of your printer.)
  5. As an alternative, use Fit To to specify how many pages you want the output to occupy.
  6. Click on OK.
  7. Print your worksheet as normal.

One of the tricks I often use is to set the Fit To settings 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 (2841) 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: Scaling Your Printing.

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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