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: Changing Orientations within a Single Printout.

Changing Orientations within a Single Printout

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 25, 2019)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


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When Greg prints his workbook, he would like some worksheets to print in portrait orientation and some to print in landscape orientation. Greg knows he can print the worksheets one at a time, but he would like to print the workbook in one go. He wonders if there is some way to do this.

Actually, it is easier than one would think. Excel allows you to set the page parameters independently for each worksheet in a workbook. Thus, you can set some as landscape and some as portrait and later just print the whole workbook. Excel keeps track and orients the printing properly for each worksheet.

Here's the easy way to set orientation for a group of worksheets:

  1. Click the tab of the first worksheet.
  2. Hold down the Ctrl key as you click tabs of other worksheets you want to have the same orientation as the first worksheet. Each worksheet tab should appear "highlighted," indicating you are constructing a set of selected worksheets.
  3. Choose the Page Setup option from the File menu. Excel displays the Page Setup dialog box. (See Figure 1.)
  4. Figure 1. The Page Setup dialog box.

  5. Specify the orientation you want to use for the selected worksheets.
  6. Click OK.
  7. Click on a worksheet tab different than the one that is currently selected. The tabs should go back to normal, indicating that you are no longer working with a selection set.

When you later want to print your worksheets, simply select the worksheets you want to print before doing the print or display the Print dialog box and specify that you want to print the entire workbook.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3784) 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 Orientations within a Single Printout.

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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What is 2 + 8?

2021-06-03 11:47:31

Hannah

Agree with previous comment from Rocco: it seems like it should work this way, and I seem to be able to set different orientations for different sheets within a workbook, but when I go to print multiple sheets with differently-set orientations, they all print the same way. This is also in Excel 2016. Is there a fix?


2020-03-28 11:39:12

Rocco

Yes. That's how I used to do it, but it does not work that way in Excel 2016. After setting different orientations of selected sheets, then choosing to print all of them, the orientation changes to align with one sheet. Is Excel 2016 incapable of printing different orientations in a workbook in one printing? A Google search indicates that others have this issue.


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