For example, if you want to squeeze a wide two-page spreadsheet onto one printed page, select the option for 1 page.

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Maybe it printed in portrait mode when it shouldve printed landscape.

Perhaps a certain section of your spreadsheet never printed or the spreadsheet took too many pages to print.

Whatever went wrong, you can avoid many printing problems in Excel by following certain tips, such as tweaking the margins, setting the print area, scaling the sheet to print, and choosing the right sheet options.

For these steps, Im using Excel 365 as part of an Office 365 subscription, but most of the advice here applies to the past couple of versions of Excel as well.

LEARN MORE: Office 365 Consumer pricing and features How to check the orientation before printing Excel spreadsheets This may seem obvious, but check the orientation before you print.

To check this, select the tab for Page Layout and click the icon for Orientation ( Figure A ).

To minimize the number of printed pages, choose the option for Narrow, or select Custom Margins and set up your own.

Remember to leave at least a little space for margins to give your printed spreadsheet room to breathe ( Figure B ).

Figure B data-credit relnoopener noreferrer nofollow How to clear or set the print area before printing Excel spreadsheets If your Excel spreadsheet isnt printing properly, clearing or setting a print area can often help.

Sometimes the wrong print area has already been set, in which case you want to clear it.

To do this from the Page Layout Ribbon, click the Print Area icon and select Clear Print Area.

If you now want to redefine the print area, select the cells that you want to print.

Click the Print Area icon and select Set Print Area ( Figure C ).

To set a horizontal page break, select the row where you want the printed page to break.

At the Page Layout Ribbon, click the Breaks icon and select Insert Page Break ( Figure D ).

To remove the break, select the same row or column, click the Breaks icon, and select Remove Page Break.

If youve created multiple page breaks that you want to remove, choose the option to Reset All Page Breaks.

Figure D data-credit relnoopener noreferrer nofollow How to check preview before printing Excel spreadsheets Now might be a good time to see check how your spreadsheet will look when printed.

Press CtrlF2 to jump into Print mode where you can preview the spreadsheet.

When done, click the left arrow at the top to return to regular view.

Figure E data-credit relnoopener noreferrer nofollow How to scale to fit before printing Excel spreadsheets Another way to control the printing on multi-page spreadsheets is by setting a certain width, height, or scale.

At the Page Layout Ribbon, click the dropdown box next to Width--from here, you can set a specific number of pages to print across.

View Single Page In Excel For Mac