How To Print An Excel Spreadsheet Like A Pro

Before we get started, hit the button below to download our free example workbook. You can use it to follow along throughout the rest of the article.

Of course, if there’s a specific document that you’re having trouble printing, feel free to use that instead!

While many people use the default normal layout, I find it useful to use the page layout view to get a better idea of how my document will print. Here’s what it looks like:

If you’re going to print your Excel document, this is a great way to quickly see how it will look.

To activate this view, open the View tab and click the Page Layout view button:

One of the simplest tweaks you can make to your spreadsheet to improve the printing is changing the orientation. Like with most apps, the default orientation is portrait (vertical).

But a landscape orientation (horizontal) can help in getting a lot of columns onto a single page. In fact, you might find that it becomes your default orientation for printing.

To change the page orientation in Excel, click over to the Page Layout tab and click Orientation. From there, you can choose portrait or landscape:

By default, Excel prints everything in your spreadsheet. But what if you don’t want to print everything?

If you want to only print a certain part of your spreadsheet, you’ll need to adjust the print area. This setting tells Excel what you want to print. Let’s take a look at the exercise file to see how this works.

As you can see, the first worksheet in the example workbook has two different groups of data.

If we were to print it without adjusting the print area, we’d get the first section and a single column of the second:

This wouldn’t be a great way to print the document.

Fortunately, we can adjust the print area so we only print the first set of data.

First, select the cells you want to print (in our case, that will be A1:D100).

Next, on the Page Layout tab, click Print Area.

When the dialog appears, choose Set Print Area.

You’ll see that the print area is now highlighted.

To give you even more control over the print area of your document, Excel gives you the power to make multiple selections.

Adding a selection to the print area is easy: after you’ve made your first selection and set it as the print area, click Print Area again. Then hit Add to Print Area.

The second area is now highlighted as well, and will be printed when you print your document.

If your document is going to print over multiple pages, you can control the layout by adding page breaks. Let’s take a look at how that works.

In the second worksheet of our exercise file, you’ll see that we have a lot of data. So much so, in fact, that it’s going to be split onto four different pages. In the middle of the second page, however, is a heading that splits our data into two sections:

Let’s insert a page break so that heading appears at the top of the third page, instead of the middle of the second.

First, click on the row that you’d like to appear at the top of the page after the break. (In our case, that’s row 55):

Then, click Breaks in the Page Layout tab and select Insert Page Break:

Now, you’ll see that the new heading has been placed at the top of page three:

You can also insert vertical page breaks.

Selecting the column to the right of where you’d like the break, and repeat the same process of Page Layout > Breaks > Insert Page Break:

Excel makes it easy to move page breaks, too. Open up the Page Break Preview in the View tab:

In this screen, you can see where your data falls on different pages.

Of course, removing a page break is another option. It’s just as easy as adding one. Select the row below (or the column to the right of) the page break you want to remove, and click Breaks > Remove Page Break.

Your cells will be back where they started.

If you’d like to remove all the manual page breaks you’ve added, use Breaks > Reset All Page Breaks.

By default, Excel won’t print any gridlines between your cells. It might be a matter of preference, or it might result in an easier-to-read document . . . but sometimes you want those gridlines printed.

Let’s take a look at how to do that!

First, select the sheet you’d like to print.

In the Page Layout tab, under the Gridlines heading, make sure to check the box next to Print.

Now, when you print your document, you’ll get lines between the cells.

You can also select Headings to get the row numbers and column letters, as well.

Adding page breaks and adjusting the print area are great for splitting up data and selectively printing only some cells.

But you might occasionally want something more straightforward.

If your document is just over a single page—as the third sheet in our example workbook is—scaling it down so it finds on one sheet of paper is easy.

Head to the Page Layout tab, find the Scale to Fit section, and click the expansion arrow in the bottom-right corner:

In the resulting window, make sure the radio button next to Fit to: is selected, and specify the number of pages you’d like the document to take up.

With a larger spreadsheet, you might need to change the proportions by selecting a larger number of pages for the width or height.

You can also use the Adjust to: option to scale the print size of your document up or down to fit it to the number of pages you’d like.

Keep in mind that fitting to a specific number of pages and scaling can result in very tiny text if you’re not careful.

The page layout view makes adding a header and footer very easy. Move your mouse into the header or footer area, and you’ll see “Add header” or “Add footer.”

Just click and start typing! That’s all there is to it.

There’s also a Header & Footer button in the Insert tab that brings up a useful menu:

You can click the various buttons to insert useful pieces of information, like the page number, number of pages, the date, file name, file path, and more.

There are also a number of useful options here for having a different header on the first page, different headers on odd and even pages, and aligning the header and footer with the margins.

If you need just a little bit more space to get your document printed how you want it, you can adjust Excel’s margins.

The easiest way to do this is by clicking the Margins button in the Page Layout tab. Normal, Wide, and Narrow use preset values, and the Custom Margins… option lets you choose your own.

You can also adjust the margins in the Page Setup dialog. Just click the arrow in the bottom-right corner of the Page Setup section of the Page Layout tab.

Click over to the Margins tab of the resulting dialog:

Printing spreadsheets in Excel aren’t always easy. This is especially true if you’re working with very large documents.

But by making a few simple tweaks, you’ll have spreadsheet printouts that look especially professional.

Whether you’re trying to squeeze a few more cells onto a single sheet or break up a huge number of pages into more manageable chunks, these printing options will help.