Printing spreadsheets can quickly become a frustrating experience if not done correctly. From misaligned columns and improper margins to awkward page breaks, a lot can go wrong. However, by taking advantage of the following key settings in Microsoft Excel, you can ensure perfect printouts every time.
Review Page Orientation
Choosing the right page orientation in Excel—portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal)—can save you time and paper by ensuring that your data is presented in the most effective way.
Portrait orientation is ideal for narrow spreadsheets with more rows than columns, such as lists of customer names, inventory items, or similar data sets. In contrast, landscape orientation works best for wide spreadsheets with many columns. It’s especially useful for financial reports, data tables with many fields, or any dataset that benefits from a wider, single-page view.
Excel’s default page orientation is set to portrait, but you can switch to landscape if needed by going to the Page Layout tab and choosing Orientation options.
Set the correct paper size and margins
Excel allows you to print on a variety of paper sizes, from standard letter and legal sizes to custom dimensions. Choosing the proper size ensures that your data fits nicely on the page, avoiding awkward cutoffs or excessive white space.
To adjust the paper size in Excel, press Ctrl+P to open the Print menu, then use the drop-down menu below Page Orientation to select the appropriate paper size you’re using.
In the Print menu, Excel also provides preset margin options: Normal, Wide, and Narrow. If you need more precision, choose Custom Margins to adjust the top, bottom, left, and right margins separately. This ensures that your content fits nicely within the boundaries of the page, preventing data or charts from getting cut off.
Scale a spreadsheet to fit the page
With Excel’s scaling options, you can print all relevant information on a single page and minimize page breaks. This ensures that your data is easy to read and readers don’t need to turn over multiple pages.
Start by navigating to the Page Layout tab and locating the Scale to Fit group. Here, you can adjust the width and height settings to make your content one page wide, one page tall, or customize the number of pages depending on your needs.
Specify the print area
The Print Area feature lets you choose exactly which cells to include in your printout. This way, the printed spreadsheet will only contain relevant information.
To set the print area, first highlight the range of cells you want to print. Then, go to the Page Layout tab and choose Print Area > Set Print Area. If you need to adjust the print area later, you can easily reset it by selecting Clear print area.
Hide and show cells as needed
Sometimes, setting a specific print area may not be practical because of the layout or the need to include additional details elsewhere in the spreadsheet. In such cases, hiding unnecessary cells in Excel can be an effective solution. To hide cells, select the rows or columns you want to hide, right-click the row or column header, and select Hide.
Excel does not include any hidden cells in the printout—which allows you to print only the information you need. If you need to refer to the hidden data later, you can easily unhide the cells by double-clicking the thin double line next to the hidden row or column.
Use print titles for long spreadsheets
Print titles allow you to specify specific rows or columns to repeat on each page of your printed sheet. This ensures that necessary headers or labels remain visible throughout the dataset.
For example, if your spreadsheet has a header row with important information, setting this row as the print title will make it appear at the top of each printed page. This way, even if your spreadsheet spans multiple pages, viewers can easily identify data columns without having to go back to the first page.
To set a print title, switch to the Page Layout tab and click Print Title. In the Page Setup window that appears, you can specify the rows or columns you want to repeat. Enter the desired rows in the Repeat rows at top field and the columns in the Repeat columns at left field.