Printing Pointers

You've done a good job on the spreadsheets.  Now you want to put on the finishing touches.  You can make a great impression here or blow it.  Here are some thoughts to do your best:

Avoid long worksheets.  The best printing tip is to have your worksheets broken up into small pieces.  Make it too large down and or across and it becomes much tougher to set up the printing, not to mention navigate online.

Use the Page Break Preview feature via Print Preview.  Print Preview is an icon that looks like a sheet with a magnifying glass at the side.  You can also access it via the menu bar- file, then print preview.  Yet another way is through Page Setup form the the same file menu bar.  The later versions of Excel added this feature.  You can use this to more easily set the borders on worksheets that will printout in multiple pages.  While in Print Preview, you will see a button at the top to get into the Page Break Preview mode.  Don't forget after using it to click the button at the top to return to the normal view.

Don't make the pages too small.  Go into Page Setup (from the file menu) and in the page tab, check out the percentage.  As a rule of thumb, if it is below 65%, you are starting to get into a small, small world.

Number the sheets.  Use the Header/Footer tab in Page Setup to have these set automatically.  There are a couple good selections in the dropdown list for footers.  You can also set what page number you want for the first page in the first page number box on the Page tab in Page Setup (for this to work you will need to have setup page numbers in your header or footer).

For setting up a worksheets that has multiple sheets to print:

Finally, use Print Preview as a final check to check your printing before you pull the trigger to print.

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