Printing to a Disk File

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 3, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Let's say you work in an office and are preparing a presentation with Excel. You want your presentation to look as good as it can, but the only printer you have is an old low-resolution ink-jet printer. While this output might be acceptable for some purposes, you want your presentation to look real good. You know that Joe, down the hall, has a 1200dpi (dots per inch) PostScript color laser printer (lucky Joe!), and this would give your presentation the punch you need. Unfortunately, Joe's printer is not available through your office network. Short of unplugging his printer and hefting it down to your office, what do you do?

The easiest solution is to print your workbook to disk or to a thumb drive (one of those little memory-based drives) and then take the file down to Joe's computer where you can send it to the printer. While this might seem complicated, it is not really. There is, however, a specific sequence of steps you must follow:

  1. Make sure you have a Windows printer driver for Joe's printer installed on your machine. This might seem strange, particularly since his printer is not attached to your system. It is necessary, however, since the printer driver provides the interface between Windows and the target printer (Joe's printer).
  2. Start Excel and load the workbook you want to print.
  3. Choose Print from the File menu. Excel displays the Print dialog box. (See Figure 1.)
  4. Figure 1. The Print dialog box.

  5. Make sure that Joe's printer driver is selected in the Name drop-down list.
  6. Make sure the Print to File check box is selected.
  7. Print as normal.

When you print, you will be asked for a filename where you want the printer output stored. Supply a regular filename. Outside of this, printing will appear to progress as normal. When you have finished printing, you can then copy the newly created output file to the disk or thumb drive and walk it down to Joe's machine. If the name of the file is REPORT.OUT , you would enter the following at the command prompt on Joe's machine:

COPY  F:REPORT.OUT  LPT1:

Just replace the F: with the drive letter of the drive on which your output file is located. (Chances are good it will be something else.) This command sends the report file to the parallel printer port on Joe's machine.

Shortly you will have the output you desire. (If you use this command and it does not seem to work properly on Joe's system, try it by adding a space and a /B to the end of the line.)

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3240) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

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

Discovering Dependent Workbooks

When you starting linking information from one workbook to another, those workbooks become dependent on each other. ...

Discover More

Working with Imperial Linear Distances

Excel works with decimal values very easily. It is more difficult for the program to work with non-decimal values, such ...

Discover More

Adding a Tool to Clear Borders

Excel allows you to easily add tools to the Quick Access Toolbar. If you want to add a tool that clears all the borders ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Printing More Than One Copy

Need to print more than a single copy of a worksheet? You can do it easily by using the controls in the Print dialog box.

Discover More

Disabling Printing

Don't want your worksheets to be printed out? You can make it a bit harder to get a printout by applying the techniques ...

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 five more than 3?

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.