Printing

Basic Printing

If you want to print a single copy of the active worksheet you can press the Print button on the Standard toolbar.
To print the entire worksheet you can select any individual cell and pres the Print button.
Before you print it is worth checking the layout of the worksheet using two additional views.
Print - This button always prints the default print area and your data will always appear in the top left corner of the page. Using this button will always print one copy of the entire worksheet regardless of whether you have highlighted a specific range of cells.
Print Preview - Before printing it is always worth checking that the format is OK by using (File > Print Preview).
Page Break Preview - An alternative way to view your worksheets which displays the total print area. This can be changed by selecting (View > Page Break Preview).

A lot of the printing options can be accessed from the (File > Page Setup) dialog box.
The "Page Setup" dialog box lets you change a vast number of workbook specific settings.
Changing these options will not affect the way your worksheet appears in the screen.
Page tab - These include orientation, scaling, paper size
Margins tab - Allows you to adjust the margins to fit the most amount of data onto a page.
Header/Footer tab - You can specify headers and footers which appear at the top and bottom of all pages respectively. You can also include information (such as filename, page numbers, date, time) and all this information is updated each time the worksheet is printed. However this will only display the headings when printed and not on the screen.
When you save a workbook all the settings from the Page Setup dialog box are saved with it.

Printing Worksheets

If you do not want to print the whole worksheet, but just part of it, highlight the cells you want to print before selecting (File > Print).
If you want to include the gridlines when you print out a worksheet, select the Gridlines checkbox on the Sheet tab
Any blank cells at the bottom or on the right of a defined print area are ignored automatically.
Is a worksheet automatically updated before it is printed ??
You can specify rows to be repeated at the top of the page, and columns to be repeated on the left hand side of the page. This allows you to include headings in these rows and columns that will appear both on the screen and when printed.
Printing a coloured worksheet on a black and white printer can often be hard to read. It will be much easier to read if you choose to print it in black and white.
It is easy to define any rows or columns that you want repeated on every page. This is helpful when you want to review worksheets that print on several pages.
Excel 2002 includes a feature called Inteliprint. This examines the content of your worksheets and only prints worksheets that contain data.
The default page break setup is every 9 columns and every 51 rows ??

Printing Charts

You can print a chart by itself, by selecting the chart and pressing (File > Print). If you want to print the area around a chart then select the cell range surrounding the chart before pressing (File > Print).
When you have a chart sheet selected you will see a Chart specific tab in the (File > Page Setup) dialog box.
You can specify where on the page you want the chart printed and charts can be moved and resized using Page Break View.
If you have a chart or chart sheet selected then using the Print button on the standard toolbar will print the entire chart.

Printing Pictures and Shapes

If you add any objects (i.e. controls, images, shapes etc) to a worksheet and you do not want then to be printed out, right click the object and select Properties. Remove the check against "Print Object".

Excluding certain Rows and Columns

Any hidden rows or columns will not be printed. If you are printing with row and column headings any hidden rows or columns will be visible.
If you want to print your worksheet but to exclude certain rows or columns you can use the Group and Outline feature. This allows you to easily display your data and then hide it again before printing. Any rows or columns in an Outline that are grouped together will not be printed.

Printing multiple Areas

It is possible to set up multiple print areas on the same worksheet by using Custom Views and Print Report commands. Once you have defined a number of different views you can then define reports based on the views of your choices.

Printing several workbooks

You can select the workbooks in Windows Explorer, right click and select Print.
Excel will be opened automatically (if not open already) the workbooks will be printed and Excel will be closed afterwards.

Using Print Preview to Print

If you hold down the Shift key and press the Print Preview button on the Standard toolbar you will actually perform the same operation as clicking the Print button on the standard toolbar.

Printing Quickly

If you want to print your worksheets quickly and you are just checking the data is correct then it will be sufficient to print in draft quality. This will significantly speed up the time to print a worksheet. This can be changed from (File > Page SetUp)(Sheet tab, Draft Quality).

Saving your Settings

Open a new workbook
Change all the options, page setup etc
Save your workbook in the following directory so it will always be the default used when you create a new workbook.

You can quickly print an entire workbook by selecting (File > Print) and select "Entire Workbook" in the Print What area.
You can print selected worksheets by holding down the Ctrl key and selecting the worksheets before dislpaying the Print dialog box. Then select (File > Print) and choose "Active Sheets".
You can print just the selection by choosing "Selection" on the print dialog box.

You can print several workbooks at once by selecting them in Windows Explorer and then using the shortcut menu to select Print. Each workbook will be opened, printed and then closed.
You can also print to a file by selecting the "Print to File" checkbox.

You can print cell comments by using the Comments drop-down list.
You can also print in draft

Copying Page Setup to other Worksheets

Select all the sheets you want to have the settings appear on
Press Ctrl and select all the sheet tabs
Activate the worksheet which has the correct page setup
Select (File > Page Setup) and click OK

Paper Sizes

Letter - (8.5 by 11)
Legal - (8.5 by 14)
Executive - (7.25 by 10.5)

If you have a reasonably large worksheet that needs to be split into several pages you can use the "Fit to Option
Fot to Option - default is 1 page wide, 1 page tall
This option lets you shrink the pages to fit a specific number of pages

Printer Options

You should always check the printer options before printing
The printer setup options will let you change the orientation, page order, number of pages per sheet as well as some other options including which paper tray to use.
If you want to print the current worksheet without changing any of the options then you can just hit the print button.
You can print:
1) Continuous Worksheets - these are worksheets that are next to each other
2) Non Continuous Worksheets - worksheets separated by other worksheets - use Ctrl key to select

Saving your Print Settings

If you want to save your print settings you can save them to a custom view
Please refer to the following section ?? and leave the print settings checkbox ticked.
SS

Cancelling Printing

It is possible to cancel a print job while it is printing
Print > Settings > Queue
Only possible if the itme is in the queue.

How to Print non contiguous Cell Ranges

You can print a non-contiguous cell range by creating a linked picture of a range.
You can take pictures of ranges and then paste them together in a single area that can then be printed.
Select the range and copy. Hold down Shift and press (Edit > Paste Picture Link).

Pixels to Inches

If you want to know wxactly how large something on a worksheet will be when it is printed you need to be able to convert inches into pixels
Pixels to Inches: inches = pixels / dots per inch.
Inches to Pixels: pixels = inches * dots per inch.
You can obtain your DPI number from your Control Panel > Display settings.
The exact number will depend on which driver you have installed but selecting the Settings tab and pressing the Advanced button will give you more information about your current driver.
A typical DPI is 96.

Cells & Ranges

printing cell borders