Printing Workbooks


There may be times when you want to print a workbook to view and share your data offline. Once you've chosen your page layout settings, it's easy to preview and print a workbook from Excel using the Print pane.

To access the Print pane

  1. Select the File tab. Backstage view will appear.  
  2. Select Print. The Print pane will appear.  

9.1. Choosing a print area

Before you print an Excel workbook, it's important to decide exactly what information you want to print. For example, if you have multiple worksheets in your workbook, you will need to decide if you want to print the entire workbook or only active worksheets. There may also be times when you want to print only a selection of content from your workbook.

To print active sheets

Worksheets are considered active when selected.

  1. Select the worksheet you want to print. To print multiple worksheets, click the first worksheet, hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard, then click any other worksheets you want to select.  
  2. Navigate to the Print
  3. Select Print Active Sheets from the Print Range drop-down menu.  
  4. Click the Print button.  

To print the entire workbook

  1. Navigate to the Print
  2. Select Print Entire Workbook from the Print Range drop-down menu.  
  3. Click the Print button.  

To print a selection

  1. Select the cells you wish to print.
  2. Navigate to the Print
  3. Select Print Selection from the Print Range drop-down menu.    
  4. A preview of your selection will appear in the Preview
  5. Click the Print button to print the selection.  


  • TIP: If you prefer, you can also set the print area in advance so you'll be able to visualize which cells will be printed as you work in Excel. Simply select the cells you want to print, click the Page Layout tab, select the Print Area command, then choose Set Print Area. 

9.2. Fitting and scaling content

On occasion, you may need to make small adjustments from the Print pane to fit your workbook content neatly onto a printed page. The Print pane includes several tools to help fit and scale your content, such as scaling and page margins.

To fit content before printing

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

  1. Navigate to the Print
  2. Select the desired option from the Scaling drop-down menu. In our example, we'll select Fit Sheet on One Page.  
  3. The worksheet will be condensed to fit onto a single page.
  4. When you're satisfied with the scaling, click Print.

To modify margins in the Preview pane

Sometimes you may only need to adjust a single margin to make your data fit more comfortably. You can modify individual page margins from the Preview pane.

  1. Navigate to the Print pane, then click the Show Margins button in the lower-right corner.  
  2. The page margins will appear in the Preview Hover the mouse over one of the marginmarkers until the cursor becomes a double arrow .
  3. Click, hold, and drag the mouse to increase or decrease the margin width.
  4. Release the mouse. The margin will be modified. In our example, we were able to fit an additional column on the page.

Challenge!

  1. Open an existing Excel workbook.
  2. Try printing two active worksheets.
  3. Try printing only a selection of cells.
  4. Try the scaling feature to condense your workbook content.
  5. Adjust the margins from the Preview pane.
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