How to Get the Print Preview in Excel

Last Updated: February 21, 2024
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- Written by Puneet

The print preview option is available in Excel 2010 and now it has been named Print. To get the print, you need to use the keyboard shortcut which is Control + P. It allows you to see the preview of the current page and you can make any changes before printing it out.

print-preview-page

In this tutorial, we will learn the use of the print preview function along with its settings and options in Excel.

Steps to Show Print Preview

There are two ways to do that:

1. From the File Tab on Ribbon

  • First, you need to select the entire data that you want to print.
select-data-to-print
  • After that, click on the file tab, and from the list of options select the Print option.
click-file-tab-and-select-print

2. Using a Keyboard Shortcut

You can also print the data by pressing the keyboard shortcut keys that are CTRL +P. Once you press these keys, then it will directly open the print preview page.

Page Settings

1. Print Button

It is on the top left side of the page. And when you click, it will print out the page that you have shown on the right side.

print-button

2. Copies

Here, you can specify the number of copies that you want to print.

add-number-of-copies

3. Printer

Select the printer and give the command to print the page. If the printer is not available in the list, then add it first.

4. Print Range Drop-down

  • Active Sheet: To print an active sheet, select the print active sheets from the print range drop-down and then click print.
select-print-active-sheet
  • Print Entire Workbook: You have the option to print multiple worksheets altogether from a single workbook. And for this, you need to select the print entire workbook as you see below.
click-when-print-entire-workbook
  • Print Selection: This option is specially used when you want to print a specific range of cells instead of an entire sheet. For print selection, you need to select the cells first and then click on the print selection from the drop-down.
select-the-area-to-print

5. Page Orientation

  • Portrait Orientation: When you have data with more rows in the worksheet, then select portrait orientation as it will help you to fit all the rows on a single page.
portrait-orientation-page
  • Landscape Orientation: Just like more rows, the landscape orientation will help you to fit a large number of columns on a single page.
select-landscape-orientation-to-fit-columns

6. Paper Size

The next thing after selecting the page orientation is to select the size of the paper. It is in centimeters and of various forms like letters, A4 sheets, legal, envelope, and so on.

select-paper-size

7. Margins

It helps to set the margins of the sheet and the data from the top, bottom, left, right, header, and footer also. It divides into three categories normal, wide, and narrow and you can also customize it as per your need.

margins-of-the-page

8. Scaling

This feature is used to make some adjustments to fit your data on the page so that it would not be cut off by the printer while printing. In the scaling drop-down, you can select the desired option.

In the following example, we have selected the Fit Sheet on One Page option to fit the entire data into a single page. But, in this, your data has shrunk, and it is very difficult to read.

scaling-to-fit-sheet-on-one-page