If you print a specific part of your worksheet frequently, Microsoft Excel lets you select a specific print area. This means you don’t have to select it every time you want to print. We’ll show you how.
You can define one or more print areas in the same Excel spreadsheet. To define a single print area, select the cells. Next, navigate to the Page Layout tab and click the Print Area drop-down arrow on the ribbon. Choose Set Print Area.
To define multiple print areas on your sheet, hold down the Ctrl key while selecting each group of cells.
Here we have selected cells A1 to F13, held down the Ctrl key and then selected cells H1 to M13. Next, go to the Page Layout tab and select “Set Print Area” from the Print Area drop-down list. When it’s time to print, each print area appears on its own page.
After you set a print area in your Excel spreadsheet, it will be saved automatically when you save your workbook. This allows you to quickly print the same point without resetting the print area.
After you’ve set up your print area, you may want to confirm that you’ve selected the correct cells. Open the View tab and select Page Break Preview. You will then see each print area that you have defined for this sheet.
When you’re done, click Normal or Layout to return to your sheet, depending on which view you were using.
You may need to add more cells to your print area after setup. You have two options to adjust the print area depending on whether you want to embed adjacent cells or not.
If you want to include just one more set of cells in the print area setup, select the cells. Next, navigate to the Page Layout tab and select Add to Print Area from the Print Area drop-down list.
When you do this, those extra cells are considered their own printable area because they are not adjacent to any other printable area on the sheet. So this group of cells will be printed on its own page, as you can see in the page break preview below.
Now, if you want to increase the size of a current print area to accommodate more cells, make sure to select the cells adjacent to the area. Next, select “Add to print area” from the “Print area” drop-down list.
Then when you use the page break preview, you can see that the print area has been increased and stays on the same page.
If you want to see a quick preview of how the page will look when printed, go back to the Layout tab. Click the arrow in the lower-right corner of the Layout section of the ribbon.
Click Print Preview.
You can then see exactly how the sheet will look when you print it. Tap the arrow in the top left to return to your sheet.
Note: You can also select File > Print or use the Ctrl+F2 shortcut to view your print preview.
If you make a lot of changes to your sheet, just don’t want to print a certain section, or want to set up a new print area, you can easily delete an existing area.
Select the print area or a cell within it. On the Page Layout tab, in the Print Area drop-down list, click Clear Print Area.
If you have multiple print areas set up, just do this for each one on your sheet.
For more help with printing in Microsoft Excel, see Print gridlines with row and column headings or Print an Excel sheet with a background.