Setting Print Area in Excel

Modified on Mon, 13 Jan at 9:14 AM

This article is useful for when you want to print specific areas of an Excel spreadsheet rather than the entire thing. This is also useful for scenarios when Excel seems to freeze during print / time out during the printing of larger spreadsheets - as you'd need to set a manual print area so Excel knows what exactly you want to print. Below are two examples of setting print area

NOTE - This only seems to fix the printing issue sometimes. It's not a definite solution - please refer to https://storyhomes.freshdesk.com/a/solutions/articles/42000111137 for a more definite solution

Example 1 - Excluding specific table columns from the print job

In this first example I want to print out a table within Excel but only include the columns up to May-23

In Page Layout --> Print Area click Clear Print Area to clear any previous hidden formatting. Then, click & drag your cursor over the print area. Once the area is selected, click Set Print Area. I will be printing each row in the table with only the columns up to May-23

When I go to print the Spreadsheet, Excel will read the print area and then only include this

And from here you can change orientation & other print properties. Without setting a print area the Print section would look like this

Example 2 - Exclude entire tables from the print job

In this second example I have multiple tables within a Spreadsheet. I just wish to print the 'main' table within the spreadsheet

Again I would go ahead and clear the current print area and highlight the table which I would like to print like I have below

And then if I go to the Print section, Excel will only read the newly highlighted area to print instead of the whole sheet

And if, for example, I would like to also print some of the smaller tables too I would simply create a new print area by highlighting the tables I wish to print. And by doing this you have the option to (for example) print the larger tables in A3 format and have the smaller tables in A4 format - as Excel only lets you set a single page size per print job