Handling Special Printing Needs
NOT ALL PRINT JOBS ARE the same and there are times when simply choosing File > Print is not enough. Instructions for handling some of those special cases can be found in this section.
Selecting Multiple Worksheets to Print
Suppose you had a workbook that kept track of your sales figures for the entire year. You might have chosen to create a separate worksheet for each month’s sales and another worksheet that summarizes the year-to-date sales figures.
At the end of each month, you choose to print a hard copy of your month’s sales and the summary information for your files. You could print the entire workbook and throw away the unwanted pages, or you could use this more eco-friendly alternative.
Select only the worksheet tabs that you want to print. Table 10-1 describes the key combinations required to select multiple worksheet tabs.
Table 10-1. Printing Multiple Worksheets Print Mouse and Keystroke Combination A single worksheet Click the sheet tab at the bottom of the Excel window. Adjacent worksheets Click the first sheet tab, then hold Shift and click the last sheet tab you want to print. Excel will highlight all of the sheet tabs in between. Non-adjacent worksheets Click the first sheet tab, then press Ctrl+additional sheet tabs you want to print. Figure 10-2 illustrates how Excel highlights only the selected tabs. Choose File > Print and print the document as you normally would. Excel prints the tabs you selected and ignores all of the other tabs.
Changing Orientation in the Same Print Job
As you discovered in Chapter 9, “Preparing to Print,” orientation refers to the direction of the printed page. Excel will print your file in portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal) format. By default, Excel will print all of the pages in a workbook using the same page orientation. However, you can use the features provided in Excel to customize the orientation to fit your data.
You can specify the print orientation for each worksheet in a workbook file.
Select the first worksheet tab that you want to print.
Choose Page Layout > Page Setup > Orientation (arrow) and select the appropriate orientation for the data on the worksheet.
Select the worksheet tab corresponding to any other worksheets that you want to print and choose the appropriate orientation for each worksheet.
Select the worksheets that you want to print, following the steps in the previous section.
Choose File > Print and confirm the page orientation in the Print Preview window.
Click the Print button to print. Figure 10-3 demonstrates how pages in the same print job can have two different orientations.
Figure 10-3. You can specify the print orientation for each worksheet in a print job.
Printing Multiple Pages on a Single Sheet
Excel worksheets are created to manage your data. They are generally formatted to serve that purpose, and not necessarily to accommodate printing. Have ever wished you could put the information from two worksheets together on a single printed page? Well, you can do that too. Just follow these step:
1. | Select a worksheet that will print on multiple pages. You could also select multiple worksheets. |
2. | |
3. | |
4. | Click the Finishing tab and set the number of pages you want to print on a single page in the Pages Per Sheet drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 10-4. |
5. | Click OK to close the Properties dialog box. |
6. | Print the document as usual. |
Figure 10-5 illustrates an example with two worksheets printed on a single page. A chart and its associated data are presented together. Notice that both worksheets are printed in a portrait orientation. When printing multiple pages on a single sheet, you will need to keep the same page orientation for all worksheets.
Making Comments Visible
With Excel you can add comments to provide context to the data in your worksheet; think of them as an asterisk added to a data table you see in a newspaper. For instance, you might want to add a comment to your worksheet to explain that sales were low in a given month because the store had to be closed for a week during a flood.
Normally comments are visible on the worksheet only as a small red triangle in the upper-right corner of the cell. As you move the mouse pointer over a cell with a comment, a small pop-up window displays the comment (see Figure 10-6). You can learn more about adding comments to a cell in Chapter 14, “Collaborating with Others.”
Figure 10-6. A small red triangle in the corner of the cell indicates a comment.
Excel does not print comments by default; however, it does provide two methods by which you can print your comments.
Print comments as displayed on the worksheet. In this case, Excel shows the comments in their pop-up windows (see Figure 10-7).
Print comments at the end of the document. In this case, Excel prints comments on the last page of the printed document (see Figure 10-8).
Follow these steps to print comments with your worksheets:
Choose Page Layout > Page Setup and click the Dialog Box Launcher to open the Page Setup dialog box.
Click the Sheet tab.
Click the Comments arrow and specify how you want your comment printed from the drop-down list (see Figure 10-9).
Figure 10-9. The Comments option on the Sheet tab.
Click OK to close the dialog box.
Print your worksheet as usual.
Showing Off Your Formulas
Formulas are equations that perform calculations on the contents of Excel’s data cells. Formulas are extremely useful, as you discovered in Chapter 2, “Working with Formulas.” So useful, in fact, that there is sure to come a time when you will want to see exactly what formulas you used in the worksheet.
To show the formulas you used in your worksheet, choose Formulas > Formula Auditing > Show Formulas. Excel displays the contents of each cell as they were entered in the Formula Bar. As illustrated in Figure 10-10, dates are converted to the internal code that Excel uses to perform calculations on them.
After Excel displays the formulas on the worksheet, you can print the worksheet as usual. Click the Show Formulas button again to hide the formulas and return the worksheet to normal.
Adjusting Cells for Large FormulasIn most cases, you will need to adjust the cell widths to accommodate the wider formulas. |
Printing Named Ranges
As you learned in Chapter 1, “Creating a Basic Excel Worksheet,” named ranges can be used to quickly find frequently used data. This data can be in adjacent cells or in non-adjacent cells. In both cases, set the print area using the named range as described in these steps.
1. | Select the named range. Click the down arrow in the Name box of the worksheet and select your desired name from the list (see Figure 10-11). Excel highlights the cells selected by the named range. |
2. | Choose Page Layout > Page Setup > Print Area (arrow) and select Set Print Area to make the print area the same as the named range, as shown in Figure 10-12. |
If the range is a set of adjacent cells, print the worksheet as usual. If the cells in the range are not adjacent, choose one of the following methods for printing:
Print the report as usual. Excel will add a page break between each group of adjacent cells, forcing the range in this example to print on two pages (see Figure 10-13).
Print the report with multiple sheets on a single page as described earlier in this section.
Use the named range to verify which rows or columns will be used and then hide the unused rows or columns as shown in Figure 10-14 before manually setting the print area. Excel will not print hidden rows and columns and your named range will print as if the cells were adjacent.
