Excel worksheets can cover a large range of cells and when printing, you may not want to print that entire area. Excel allows you to define and work in a print area to avoid this issue. Check out these articles to learn how you can adjust Excel's print area and find answers to the questions you may have along the way.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Print Areas' topic. Click the article''s title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

   Adding the Set Print Area Tool
Spend a lot of time defining print areas in your workbooks? You might benefit by adding a Set Print Area tool to the Quick Access toolbar, thereby making defining print areas a snap.

   Clearing the Print Area
Excel allows you to specify which portions of a worksheet should be printed when you send output to your printer. If you want to get rid of a defined print area, there are a couple of ways you can do it.

   Copying Print Areas when Copying Worksheets
Print areas are a great way to define what, exactly, you want to print from a worksheet. When you copy worksheets, the print areas are normally copied. However, the way that you create your copy can have an effect on whether they are copied or not.

   Dynamically Setting a Print Area
You can define, in your worksheet, an area that you want printed. If you want this print area to be dynamic, based on the contents of a cell, then you'll appreciate the easy approach described in this tip.

   Locking the Print Area
Excel allows you to specify an area of your worksheet that should be printed. Here's how to "lock" that area so it cannot be changed.

   Multiple Print Areas on a Single Printed Page
Want to print small, non-contiguous areas of your worksheet all on a single page? You might think that defining a non-contiguous print area is the key to doing this. Excel has different ideas, however, about what should print.

   Printing Multiple Selections
Need to print several portions of a worksheet all on a single piece of paper? Here's an easy way you can get what you need using just cut and paste.

   Printing Multiple Worksheet Ranges
Need to print more than one portion of your worksheet? If you use named ranges for the different ranges you want to print, you can apply the technique in tip to print whatever named ranges you want.

   Setting Print Ranges for Multiple Worksheets
Need the same print range set for different worksheets in the same workbook? It can't be done in one step manually, but you can use a macro to make the print ranges the same.

   Setting the Print Area
Many people, when they print a worksheet, print the entire thing. You don't have to, however. You can specify that Excel print only a portion of a worksheet by designating a print area, as described in this tip.

   Using a Macro to Set a Print Range
Excel allows you to specify a print range that defines what should be printed from a given worksheet. This tip shows how to specify that print range from within a macro. (It also shows how you can automatically set the range without using a macro.)