EFFECTIVE PRINTING

Download the associated  Workbook for this lesson

As we have stated in previous lessons, we believe the content of a Worksheet is far more important than using a great deal of formatting to pretty it up.

However, when it comes to printing a Worksheet, it is essential that you know how to produce a finished product that a reader can easily relate to.  It is definitely worth spending a small amount of time on getting your printer settings correct, rather than waste time and paper trying to do it quickly. Let’s look at the printing function of Excel in more detail.

There are many different ways that you can print a Workbook.  The two most common are:

When you go to the Office Button>Print you will be taken to the Print dialog, but you can also print by selecting the downward pointing arrow to the right of the Print option and selecting either:

Print

Selecting Print takes you to the Print dialog

Quick Print

Selecting this option will by-pass the Print dialog box and print straight to your printer using its current print settings.  Use this option only when you are sure of your print settings.

Print Preview

By going to Print Preview you can see how your file will look before you print it and you can make any required changes here.

Let us now access the Print dialog box by using either the the Office Button>Print option or by selecting Ctrl + P and look at the essential functions of this dialog box in some more detail.

Printer

Name

In the white box next to Name, you will see the printer that your particular PC is connected to. If you can access more than one printer, selecting the downward pointing arrow to the right of the printer name will enable you to see the other printers you are connected to. If you wish to change printers to print (ie, if you are connected to both a black and white printer and a colour printer, you can decide which printer you wish to use by just clicking the desired printer with your left mouse button.

Status

This is telling you the status of the printer you have selected. The choices are either busy or idle.

Type

This is again telling you which type of printer you are connected to as your default

Where

This is identifying to you the location of your printer. If you are connected to a local printer it will display the port number of your computer. If you are connected to a network printer, it will display the location of the network printer.

Find Printer

Allows you to select a printer on your network that is not listed in your dialog box.  Sometimes network administrators will bar you from entering this area, but if you have access, you can select the printer you want to use, click OK to return to this menu and print the document.

Properties

By pressing this button, you will be taken to a sub-menu of Properties.  Let’s look at the sheet tabs within this sub-menu. After making a selection on any of these sheet tabs, click OK and your changes will be accepted.

Note:  Some of the options listed here may not be available to you, you may have extra options, or the option names may be slightly different.  This is entirely dependent on the printer you are connected to.

Paper

Paper Size

Under this heading you will see the various paper sizes available to your printer. Have a look at the paper sizes available to you by scrolling through with the horizontal scroll bar beneath the icon window. Clicking on the desired paper size will select it. You will note in this box that there is a custom icon. If you printer supports custom paper sizes, you can click this icon and specify the size you wish to use.

Paper Source

This box and its downward pointing arrow to the right specify where in your particular printer your paper resides. Different printers have different paper sources, such as upper tray, manual feed or lower tray and you may wish to change your source. For instance, in most business today you will find letterhead stored in an upper tray and followers (white) paper in a lower tray, or A3 paper stored in one tray, and legal in another.

Media Choice

This box and its downward pointing arrow to the right specify the type of mediums available to you. These could be in the range of standard, bond, special paper, or transparency. Note that if you select transparency, you must have a transparency in your paper tray, otherwise if you print on ordinary paper, the printer’s ink will smear and waste not only ink but paper as well.

About

This will tell you nothing more than the copyright information unique to your particular printer.

Restore Defaults

Pressing this button will restore the defaults on this page tab to their original settings.

Graphics

Resolution

This option will only apply if you are using a laser printer and true-type fonts. It enables you to change the resolution of your printing. Basically, the higher the resolution, the better quality printing you will get.

Dithering

Dithering is used for colour printing and black and white printing. It blends pure colours into patterns to simulate a wider range of colours (such as blending red and yellow together to make orange) when used with a colour printer, and will produce grey shading in graphics for black and white printers.

None 

Click None if you don’t want any dithering.

Course

Click this if your resolution setting is 300 dots per inch or higher.

Fine

Click this option if your resolution setting is 200 dots per inch or less.

Line Art

Click this option if your graphics include well-defined borders between black, white and grey settings.

Error Diffusion

For printing pictures or photographs without well-defined or sharp edges.

Intensity

This option has a slide bar that can be dragged by holding down your left mouse button on the arrow and dragging towards either darkest or lightest. It will affect how dark or light the graphics in your document are printed.

Device Options

Print Quality

The options under this heading will be unique to your printer. Basically, you can change the type of quality you want to use depending on if you want to print a draft, a presentation or whatever.

Back onto the Print Dialog Box now and we will look at Print Range.

Print Range

There are two options under print range. Select All you would use if you wish to print your entire Workbook, or Select Page(s) if you wish to only print some of your Workbook. You can either type in the From and To boxes, or you can use the spin button (the tiny upwards and downwards pointing arrows to the right of these boxes) to make a selection. Then click OK.

Print What

There are five options under this heading.

Selection

By selecting this option, Excel will only print the range you have selected.

Active Sheet

If you select this option, Excel will print the active sheet. This is defined as going from the first cell containing data to the furthest right most cell containing data, and the furthest bottom cell containing data in your Worksheet.

Ignore Print Area

Use this option to ignore any print areas that you might have specified (we haven't covered this yet)

Entire Workbook

This obviously will print the entire Workbook if selected.

Table

Select this to print only the table in your worksheet.

Copies

You can either type the number of copies that you require in this box, or use the spin button to make a selection, then select OK.

Preview

By pressing this button, you will be able to view your document in Print Preview mode. More about this now.

Different Views

Excel provides you with 5 of different Views that you can view and adjust your file.  In each view Excel provides settings that let you adjust the final appearance of the data that you wish to print.   All of the View types can be found under the View Tab's Workbook Views options.  It is entirely up to you which view you work in, you can switch between the different views to view your work in different modes and see the effects before you print your work.

The five views available to you are:

Normal View

Normal view is the default of Excel. It is the best option for working with your document and for on-screen viewing.

Page Layout

Page Layout view allows you to see the layout of your data on your page(s).  

Page Break Preview

This preview will show you the page breaks of your data and will easily allow you to adjust your print area and page breaks by dragging the page dividers.

Print Preview

To view your workbook in Print Preview mode you need to go to the Office Button>Print>Print Preview, or select Ctrl P>Preview.  If you want to print only a selection of data in your workbook, highlight the data, then go to the Office Button>Print then check the Selection option under Print What in the dialog, then click the Preview button.

Let us now have a look at printing a typical document.

Call up the attached Workbook ExcLev1L07_WB_2007.xlsx (NOTE: you may have to extract it from the ZIP first !)

At the top of your screen are 7 options. Let’s have a look at some of these now.

Print

Selecting this option will open the Print dialog.

Page Setup

If you select this button, your Page Setup dialog box will pop up in front of you and four tabs will be available.

Options in this dialog box can also be accessed via the Page Layout tab. You will notice as we go through this box that a few options are greyed out. If you select the Page Layout tab all options will be available to you, we will discuss this tab further down.

Page Tab

Orientation

Orientation means the way in which your sheet of paper prints from the printer. Portrait means with the shorter edge at the top of your page and the longer edges at the sides, and the Landscape option means with the longer edges at the top of the page and the shorter edges down the sides.

Scaling

There are two options under this heading. The first option Adjust to __% of normal size will allow you to reduce or enlarge the print range you have selected. The range varies from shrinking your selection to 10% of normal size, to expanding your selection to 400% of normal size.

The second option under this heading is Fit to __ page(s) high by __ page(s) tall. This will make our selection to fit on however many pages we specify.

Let’s now select Portrait under Orientation and Fit to 1 page(s) wide by 1 page(s) tall under Scaling. Now hit OK and you should be returned to Print Preview mode. You will notice that all our selected data now appears on one page.

If you hit the Page Setup button again, you will be returned to the Page Setup dialog box.  Note here that under Adjust to __% of normal size you have 77%. This is telling you that Excel had to reduce your selected data to 77% of it’s normal size to fit it all onto a page that is 1 page wide by 1 page tall.

Now select the Landscape button under Orientation and then select the Adjust to __% of normal size option and either type or use the spin button arrows to reach 100%. Select OK again to accept your choice.

Again you will be returned to Print Preview mode and you will notice now that your selected data is again on two pages. If we wanted to, we could select the Fit to 1 page(s) wide by 1 page(s) tall option, to fit all of our data on a landscape page, but in this case we will print on 2 pages.

Paper Size

You can change your paper size here, as well as in your Print dialog box if you wish by selecting your downward pointing arrow to see the paper sizes available through your printer.

Print Quality

You can change your print quality here, as well as in your Print dialog box by also selecting the downward pointing arrow to see the ranges available to you.

First Page Number

The default here is Auto which means your printing will start at page 1. If you wish to print starting at another page number, you can type any number other than 1 in this box.

Margins Tab

This sheet tab will show you the margins of your page and the margins of any headers or footers you may have. You can type your margins in if you wish, but it is far easier to drag your margins to your desired width.  Select the Show Margins option under Preview options in Print Preview then place your mouse on the margin until your mouse changes to a cross with a left/right arrow, or top/bottom arrow (depending on which margin you are on) then hold your left mouse button down and drag in the desired direction.  You can widen your columns in the same way. 

Centre on Page

This option  is a very handy feature By selecting either horizontal or vertical you will center your selection on your page either horizontally or vertically.

Header/Footer

The definition of a Header or Footer is something that is required to appear on every page of your document. As the names suggest, a Header is something that will appear at the top of every page, and a Footer is something that will appear at the bottom of the page. In Excel, you can have more than one Header and one Footer in each Worksheet. The Header/Footer Dialog box can be accessed through the Page Setup dialog box, or by selecting the Page Setup dialog launcher on the Page Layout tab.  You could also insert a header in Page Layout view (View tab>Workbook View>Page Layout) by clicking in the Click to Add Header box.

Let us first create a Header for the data that we wish to print.

Now you are back in your Page Setup dialog box, notice that your header is in the top white box, and also under the heading Header.

To the right of the second white box is a downward pointing drop down arrow. This contains some built-in headers. If you wanted to, you could select a build-in header, then go to Custom Header to use it for your Worksheet.

Footers work in exactly the same way so let’s put a footer in now

The last section of the Page Setup dialog box that we need to look at is under the Sheet heading

Sheet

The top area of this box is greyed out. If something is greyed out within Excel, this is because the options are not available in the area in which you are in. The options at the top of this box are only available if you access the Page Setup dialog launcher on the Page Layout tab.

The only options we need to look at here are the ones under Print.

Print

If you select Gridlines the gridlines of your Excel Worksheet will print.

If you select Black and White, your data will be printed in Black and white only (if you have colour in it, it will appear as grey shading).

If you select Draft Quality your data will be printed in draft quality.

If you select Row and Column Headings then the row and column headings (A, B, C, 1, 2, 3 etc) will be printed.

Page Order

You have two options here; Down then Over and Over then Down. Selecting one of these options will control the way data is numbered and printed when it does not fit on one page.

Let us select OK now to return us to Print Preview mode to have a look at our nearly ready to print Worksheet.

You will notice that you can now see the Header and Footer that we placed in our Worksheet.

Now hit your Next Page button and you will notice that the row that appears at the top of page 1 (Jan, Feb, 1st Quarter etc) does not appear at the top of page 2. We can easily change this by doing the following.

Next Page and Previous Page

Selecting these buttons will take you through the number of pages you have on your screen. Next Page will take you forwards and Previous Page will take you to the previous page.

Zoom

By selecting this button, you will switch between a full-page view of a sheet and a magnified view. The Zoom feature will not affect the size of your printing. It is just an aid to assist with readability. You can switch between a full-page view and a magnified view of a sheet by clicking any area of the sheet. Notice your mouse will change to a magnifying glass when you do this. Place your mouse over the part of the sheet that you wish to magnify and by clicking your mouse button it is magnified. Click again to zoom out.

Show Margins

Select the button titled Margins (another toggle button), you will see lines pop up on your screen. Each line depicts a margin. You can change your margins by hovering your mouse over the lines until your mouse changes to a cross, then drag to either widen or shorten. Selecting the Margins button again will hide the margin lines.

Once a document has been saved with it’s print settings, you only need to press the Quick Print option under Office Button>Print to print. This will by-pass Print Dialog box and send your Worksheet straight to the printer.

As we stated at the beginning of this lesson, printing is an essential part of Excel. Even in these days of a paperless office, we need to be able to efficiently present data that people can understand and use to it’s fullest capacity.  Our personal preference is to use Print Preview first to set up how a worksheet would look, although you need to be aware that not all options in the Page Setup dialog box are available to you by doing it this way. You can access the Page Setup dialog box via the Page Layout tab and have all options discussed here available, but at the end of the day, it is up to you which way you use.

 

 

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