Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. 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: Copying Print Areas when Copying Worksheets.
Michael often copies worksheets within a workbook. This allows him to maintain the original worksheet and do his work on the newly copied worksheet. The one thing that doesn't copy from the source worksheet to the target worksheet is the print area. Michael would like a way to have the print area set in the newly copied worksheet after the copy is complete.
The answer depends on what you mean when you talk about copying worksheets. Let's say that you copy a worksheet in this manner:
This copies the contents of the source worksheet to the target worksheet, but it won't copy page settings, such as headers/footers, margins, and print areas. If you want to actually copy these items, you need to make sure you perform your copy using some variation of this procedure:
Figure 1. The Move or Copy dialog box.
The resulting copy of your worksheet includes any page settings, including any print areas defined in the worksheet.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12100) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Copying Print Areas when Copying Worksheets.
Excel Smarts for Beginners! Featuring the friendly and trusted For Dummies style, this popular guide shows beginners how to get up and running with Excel while also helping more experienced users get comfortable with the newest features. Check out Excel 2013 For Dummies today!
Want to print small, non-contiguous areas of your worksheet all on a single page? You might think that defining a ...
Discover MoreSpend a lot of time defining print areas in your workbooks? You might benefit by adding a Set Print Area tool to the ...
Discover MoreMany people, when they print a worksheet, print the entire thing. You don't have to, however. You can specify that Excel ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2017-10-12 12:46:17
Lou
Hi Allen:
I know that this is an older post, but I have a similar problem that I can't seem to fix or determine the cause of: Whenever I [rt-click] copy/move sheets from an original workbook, for which the print section is set the way that I want, to a New Workbook, the exact print setting/area are not kept the same.
For example, while it may keep the original (Print 1 pg wide x 1 pg tall) settings, a column whose cell contents were fully visible in the original are now truncated due to another column or columns expanding. So then, when I go to autosize the now-truncated column, Excel now adds a 2nd 'print' page to each worksheet that has been autosized. I am then stuck having to manually reformat 10+ sheets individually to get them about the same as the original. I then thought that I could work around this by performing a Copy/Format from the original (entire columns and rows) and apply them to the New sheets, but I still had to reformat those ones too.
I'd read somewhere, the last time that I was annoyed with this, that it has to do with the default workbook fonts, but I couldn't see where my excel options differed from the original file's. The original files do occasionally come from an external party, if that makes any difference.
Anyway, thanks in advance for any help or insight on this very irritating issue. And, thanks for all of the previous help that you've provided me and us with over the years!
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.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2019 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. 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: 
Comments