Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Massive Printouts.

Massive Printouts

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 3, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


1

Ever had this happen to you? You run a print job and are surprised to get 22 pages of output. That would have been fine, except you were expecting one or two at the most. Problem is, most of the pages that came out of the printer are empty!

The problem is most likely that you mistakenly selected a cell at a distant column and row and bumped into your Space Bar. That leaves no visible signs, but Excel thinks you want to print this space.

The solution is as simple as this:

  1. Press Ctrl+End. Excel moves to the cell it thinks is at the lower-right corner of your data.
  2. If there is nothing else in that column, delete the column.
  3. If there is something in the column, but nothing else in that row, delete the row.
  4. Use Print Preview to check how many pages Excel will print. Hopefully you are back to your expected number of pages.
  5. Print your worksheet as normal.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11945) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Massive Printouts.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Turning Off a Startup Sound

If you hear a sound when you start Word, it is because of some settings within Windows itself. You can use the Control ...

Discover More

Jumping to a Relative Endnote

Endnotes are easy enough to add and accumulate in a document. For this reason, Word makes it easy to jump from one ...

Discover More

Ways to Concatenate Values

Users of the most recent versions of Excel have four different ways available to combine values into strings. Even those ...

Discover More

Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Printing Multiple Pages On a Piece of Paper

If you want to save paper on a printout, you might consider printing multiple pages on a single piece of paper. This can ...

Discover More

Setting Default Print Margins

Don't like the print margins that Excel uses by default? You can change the default by changing the workbook on which ...

Discover More

Printing Rows Conditionally

Need to only print out certain rows from your data? It's easy to do if you apply the filtering or sorting techniques ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 6 + 1?

2022-09-03 15:27:02

J. Woolley

Also, see https://excelribbon.tips.net/T012970_Jumping_to_the_Last_Possible_Cell.html


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.