Last month we talked about ways you can adjust Excel printing by setting page breaks and print areas in Excel. This month, we’re learn more about Excel printing with page scaling and row/column repeating. Read on for all the details.
Page Scaling: If your worksheet has a lot of columns or rows, you can use Excel’s Scale to Fit options to reduce the size of things to better fit your print job. How do you do this?
- Click the Page Layout tab on the ribbon.
- In the Scale to Fit group, in the Width box, select 1 page, and in the Height box, select Automatic. Columns will now appear on one page, but the rows may extend to more than one page.
To print your worksheet on just one page, in the Height box, select 1 page. Do note that if you do this, the resulting printout may be hard to read, because Excel shrinks the data to fit the sheet of paper. To see how much scaling (by percentage) is used, look at the number in the Scale box. If it’s a low number, you may need to make other adjustments before you print. For example, you may need to change the page orientation from portrait to landscape or target a larger paper size. For more information, see the section below to understand a few things about scaling a worksheet to fit a printed page.
- To print your worksheet, press CTRL+P to open the Print dialog box, and then click OK.
If things don’t come out like you expect, there are some quirks/tweaks you may need to adjust. This Microsoft Support article goes over some other things you need to know.
Repeating Columns or Rows: If you have a larger spreadsheet, you may want to have columns or rows repeat on each page to make things easier to read.
- Select the worksheet that you want to print.
- On the Page Layout tab, in the Page Setup group, click Print Titles.
- On the Sheet tab, under Print titles, do one or both of the following:
- In the Rows to repeat at top box, type the reference of the rows that contain the column labels, or click on the on the collapse dialog selection button and select the rows you want repeated.
- In the Columns to repeat at left box, type the reference of the columns that contain the row labels, or click on the on the collapse dialog selection button and select the columns you want repeated.
For example, if you want to print column labels at the top of every printed page, you could type $1:$1 in the Rows to repeat at top box.
If you’re looking for more Excel printing tips, Microsoft has a lot more tips to help you.