Excel 2019 (Part 11): Layout and Printing

You might sometimes want to print your workbook to view and share your data offline. Once you've selected your page layout settings, it's easy to preview and print your workbook from Excel using the Print panel .

 

How to access the Print control panel

1. Select the File tab. The Backstage view will appear.

2. Select Print. The Print control panel will appear.

This is the Print control panel :

 

How to print a workbook

1. Navigate to the Print control panel , then select your desired printer.

2. Enter the number of copies you want to print.

3. Select any additional settings if needed.

 

4. Click Print.

Select the printing area

Before you print your Excel workbook, it's important to decide exactly what information you want to print. For example, if you have many worksheets in your workbook, you'll need to decide whether you want to print the entire workbook or just the active worksheets. Sometimes you might also only want to print certain content from your workbook.

How to print the active spreadsheet

1. A worksheet is considered active when it is selected.

2. Select the worksheets you want to print. To print multiple worksheets, click on the first worksheet, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, and then click on any other worksheets you want to select.

3. Navigate to the Print control panel.

4. Select Print Active Sheets from the Print Range drop-down menu .

5. Click the Print button.

How to print the entire workbook

1. Navigate to the Print control panel.

2. Select Print Entire Workbook from the Print Range drop-down menu .

3. Click the Print button.

 

How to print a selection

For example, this would print the profiles of the top 40 salespeople from the Central spreadsheet.

1. Select the cells you want to print.

2. Navigate to the Print control panel.

3. Select Print Selection from the Print Range drop-down menu .

4. A preview of the selection will appear in the Preview panel .

5. Click the Print button to print the selected area.

If you wish, you can also pre-set the print area so you can visualize which cells will be printed when you work in Excel. Simply select the cells you want to print, click the Page Layout tab , select the Print Area command , and then select Set Print Area . Remember that if you need to print the entire workbook, you will need to clear the print area.

Adjust content

Sometimes, you may need to make small adjustments from the Print panel to ensure the workbook content fits neatly on the printed page. The Print panel includes several tools to help adjust and scale your content, including scaling and page margins.

How to change page orientation

Excel offers two page orientation options: landscape and portrait. Landscape orientation sets the page horizontally, while Portrait orientation sets the page vertically. The example will set the page orientation to landscape.

 

1. Navigate to the Print control panel.

2. Select your desired orientation from the Page Orientation drop-down menu. For example, we would select Landscape Orientation.

3. The new page orientation will be displayed in the Preview panel.

Revise the content before printing.

If some of your content is being cut off by the printer, you can use the scaling feature to automatically adjust your workbook to fit the printed page.

1. Navigate to the Print control panel . As seen in the previous Preview example , the content will be cropped when printed.

2. Select the desired option from the Scaling drop-down menu. For example, we would select Fit All Columns on One Page .

3. The spreadsheet will be adjusted to fit on one page.

Remember that the spreadsheet will become harder to read when scaled down, so you may not want to use this option when printing spreadsheets with a lot of information. The example will change the setting back to No Scaling.

 

How to include headings

If your worksheet uses title headings, it's important to include these headings on every page of the printed worksheet. It would be difficult to read a workbook if the headings only appeared on the first page. The Print Titles command allows you to select specific rows and columns to appear on each page.

1. Click the Page Layout tab on the Ribbon, then select the Print Titles command.

2. The Page Setup dialog box will appear. From here, you can select the rows or columns to repeat on each page. For example, this will repeat the first row.

3. Click the Collapse Dialog button next to the Rows to repeat at top: field .

4. The cursor will become a small selection arrow and the Page Setup dialog box will collapse. Select the row(s) you want to repeat at the top of each printed page. For example, we will select row 1.

5. Row 1 will be added to the Rows to repeat at top field . Click the Collapse Dialog button again.

6. The Page Setup dialog box will expand. To repeat a column, use the same procedure shown in steps 4 and 5. The example selected repeats row 1 and column A.

7. When you are satisfied with your choices, click OK.

8. In the example, row 1 appears at the top of each page and column A appears to the left of each page.

Adjust page breaks

1. Click the Page Break Preview command to switch to Page Break view .

2. The vertical and horizontal blue dotted lines indicate page breaks. Click and drag one of these lines to adjust the page break.

3. The example has placed a horizontal page break between lines 21 and 22.

4. In the example, all pages now display the same number of rows due to a change in page breaks.

 

How to modify margins in the Preview panel

Margins are the space between your content and the edge of the page. Sometimes you may need to adjust the margins to make your data fit better. You can modify page margins from the Print control panel.

1. Navigate to the Print control panel.

2. Select your desired margin size from the Page Margins drop-down menu. For example, we'll select Narrow.

3. The new page margins will be displayed in the Preview panel.

You can manually adjust the margins by clicking the Show Margins button in the bottom right corner, then dragging the margin markers in the Preview panel .