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: Specifying a Print Tray for a Worksheet.

Specifying a Print Tray for a Worksheet

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 22, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Venus has a workbook with twelve worksheets, one for each month. She wants to set it up so that the worksheets for January, April, July, and October print from a different paper tray than the other worksheets.

Unfortunately, there is no way to do this in Excel. Even in a macro there is no way to choose different paper trays. (This has been covered in other issues of ExcelTips.) The only possible solution is rather convoluted. You would need to do the following:

  1. In Windows, set up a printer definition for each paper tray you would be using. Thus, if your printer had four paper trays, you would have four printers defined, each using a different paper tray.
  2. In Excel, create a macro that printed individual worksheets to the appropriate tray-associated printers. Thus, you would have the macro print the worksheets for January, April, July, and October from tray 2 and the rest of the worksheets print from tray 1.

This sounds like a lot of work (it can be), but once it is set up it will work just fine on your system. The problem comes in if you want the same functionality on other systems in your office. The printer definitions are local to the machine on which they are defined, so you would need to define the multiple printers on every system and make sure they were named consistently. The macro would be stored with the workbook, so whoever had access to the workbook could use the macro to do the printing on the desired printers.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3177) 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: Specifying a Print Tray for a Worksheet.

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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Adding Borders to Paragraphs

Want to draw attention to a particular paragraph? A great way to do it is with a border. Word allows you to easily add ...

Discover More

Defining Shortcut Keys for Symbols

Do you need to use symbols frequently in your Excel data? The common way to insert them is by using the Symbol dialog ...

Discover More

Automatically Creating Charts for Individual Rows in a Data Table

If you have a lot of records in a data table, you may want to create individual charts based on the information in those ...

Discover More

Solve Real Business Problems Master business modeling and analysis techniques with Excel and transform data into bottom-line results. This hands-on, scenario-focused guide shows you how to use the latest Excel tools to integrate data from multiple tables. Check out Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Selecting a Paper Size

Excel can print your worksheet on just about any paper size you can imagine. How you select the paper size you want used ...

Discover More

Setting Print Quality

When printing information in a workbook, you may want to take advantage of the different print quality settings available ...

Discover More

Massive Printouts

Have you ever wanted to do a simple printout, only to find that Excel spit out dozens of pages, and most of them were ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 5 - 4?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.