Introduction

There may be times when you want to print a workbook to view and share your data offline. Once you've chosen your page layout settings, it's easy to preview and print a workbook from Excel using the Print pane.

Review our Page Layout lesson to learn more about preparing your workbook for printing.

Optional: Download our practice workbook.

To access the Print pane:

1. Select the File tab. Backstage view will appear.

   
   

   Clicking the File tab
2. Select Print. The Print pane will appear.

   
   

   Clicking Print

Click the buttons in the interactive below to learn more about using the Print pane.

To print a workbook:

1. Navigate to the Print pane, then select the desired printer.
2. Enter the number of copies you wish to print.
3. Select any additional settings if needed (see above interactive).
4. Click Print.
   Printing a workbook

Choosing a print area

Before you print an Excel workbook, it's important to decide exactly what information you want to print. For example, if you have multiple worksheets in your workbook, you will need to decide if you want to print the entire workbook or only active worksheets. There may also be times when you want to print only a selection of content from your workbook.

To print active sheets:

Worksheets are considered active when selected.

1. Select the worksheet you want to print. To print multiple worksheets, click the first worksheet, hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard, then click any other worksheets you want to select.
   Selecting multiple worksheets to print
2. Navigate to the Print pane.
3. Select Print Active Sheets from the Print Range drop-down menu.
   Printing active worksheets
4. Click the Print button.
   Clicking the Print button

To print the entire workbook:

1. Navigate to the Print pane.
2. Select Print Entire Workbook from the Print Range drop-down menu.
   Printing the entire workbook
3. Click the Print button.
   Clicking the Print button

To print a selection:

In our example, we'll print a selection of content related to upcoming softball games in July.

1. Select the cells you want to print.
   Selecting a print area
2. Navigate to the Print pane.
3. Select Print Selection from the Print Range drop-down menu.
   Printing only the selected cells
4. A preview of your selection will appear in the Preview pane.
   Viewing the selection in the Preview pane
5. Click the Print button to print the selection.

   
   

   Clicking the Print button

If you prefer, you can also set the print area in advance so you'll be able to visualize which cells will be printed as you work in Excel. Simply select the cells you want to print, click the Page Layout tab, select the Print Area command, then choose Set Print Area.

Fitting and scaling content

On occasion, you may need to make small adjustments from the Print pane to fit your workbook content neatly onto a printed page. The Print pane includes several tools to help fit and scale your content, such as scaling and page margins.

To fit content before printing:

If some of your content is being cut off by the printer, you can use scaling to fit your workbook to the page automatically.

1. Navigate to the Print pane. In our example, we can see in the Preview pane that our content will be cut off when printed.
   Viewing a cut off worksheet in the Preview pane
2. Select the desired option from the Scaling drop-down menu. In our example, we'll select Fit Sheet on One Page.
   Fitting a worksheet onto one page
3. The worksheet will be condensed to fit onto a single page.
   The scaled worksheet
4. When you're satisfied with the scaling, click Print.
   Clicking the Print button

Keep in mind that worksheets will become more difficult to read as they are scaled down, so you may not want to use this option when printing a worksheet with a lot of information.

To modify margins in the Preview pane:

Sometimes you may only need to adjust a single margin to make your data fit more comfortably. You can modify individual page margins from the Preview pane.

1. Navigate to the Print pane, then click the Show Margins button in the lower-right corner.

   
   

   Showing the margins
   
2. The page margins will appear in the Preview pane. Hover the mouse over one of the margin markers until the cursor becomes a double arrow . In our example, we'll modify the left margin to fit an additional column on the page.

   
   

   Hovering the mouse over a margin
3. Click, hold, and drag the mouse to increase or decrease the margin width.
   Decreasing the margin width
4. Release the mouse. The margin will be modified. In our example, we were able to fit an additional column on the page.

   
   

   The new margin width

Challenge!

1. Open an existing Excel workbook. If you want, you can use our practice workbook.
2. Try printing two active worksheets. If you are using the example, try printing the Player Info and Schedule worksheets.
3. Try printing only a selection of cells. If you are using the example, try printing the upcoming games for the Bulls (cell range A12:E19).
4. Try the scaling feature to condense your workbook content. If you are using the example, use scaling to make the worksheet fit onto a single page.
5. Adjust the margins from the Preview pane.