If you often use up printer paper by printing unnecessary cell ranges in Microsoft Excel you can learn how to print Excel on one page following the tried and tested methods mentioned in this Excel tutorial.

Since Excel worksheets don’t show a single-page layout like Microsoft Word, you often get confused when printing these spreadsheets. If you don’t follow specific printing tricks in Excel, you print reports in fragments on multiple pages.

Read on as I show you various cool and easy-to-remember ways to print an Excel worksheet on one page or in minimum pages if the report can’t fit in one sheet.

How to Understand Printable Area in Excel

Before you can begin printing your Excel worksheet on one page, you must first learn the indications in Excel that tell you which cell ranges shall be printed by the printer.

On your Excel spreadsheet, press Ctrl + P to go to the Print menu. A single-page print preview shall pop up. Here, you can see which columns and rows are printed on one page.

At the bottom left corner of the print preview, you can see page numbers like 1 of 4 with left and right arrows to navigate. If you see 1 of 1 in that section, the printer shall print one page. If you see 1 of X, it indicates you’re printing multiple pages.

How about seeing the printable area right on your worksheet?

It’s also possible! Click the Back button in the top left corner of the Print menu to go to your worksheet.

Now, you should see a dotted line horizontally and vertically on the worksheet as shown in the above screenshot. This is the print border of Excel. If you keep your dataset or visualizations within these borders, your printer shall print the content on one page.

These print borders shall only show if you at least press Ctrl + P once after opening your worksheet. Also, you must access the Print menu for individual worksheets separately to visualize the print border.

Now that you know the basics of printing in Excel, you can follow along with the methods mentioned below for printing Excel reports on one page.

Excel Print on One Page Using Built-In Scaling

Once you’ve created your Excel report, you should use the Scaling feature to find out if the report can be printed on one page with minimum adjustments. Microsoft Excel adjusts the font size to scale down your report so it fits on one paper.

Go to the worksheet you want to print. Press Ctrl + P to bring up the Print menu.

Click on the No Scaling drop-down menu. From the context menu that appears, choose the Fit Sheet on One Page option.

Don’t forget to click the Letter drop-down and choose the paper type, like A4, Letter, Legal, etc.

Does the print preview include all of the used cell ranges in your worksheet? If yes, click the Print button.

Printing Excel on One Page Using Custom Scaling

If you want to fine-tune the print scaling of Excel, you should try this custom scaling method.

On the source worksheet, press Alt + P + S + P to bring up the Page Setup dialog.

On the Page tab, you should find the Scaling feature.

You can scale up or down the printable content either by increasing the Adjust to value given in percent or by entering page numbers in the Fit to field.

Once you’ve manually adjusted any of the above scaling values, go to the Print menu to get the print preview.

Print on One Page by Changing Page Orientation

If you’ve got a spreadsheet that’s slightly wider than it is tall or vice versa, you can change the page orientation to fit the content of the worksheet in one sheet.

For example, in the above example, I need to print the report up to 30 rows and 10 columns. The rows are covered within one page but the last two columns, I and J don’t fit on the same page. If I print this dataset as is, the I and J columns shall print on a different paper.

To fit all 10 columns on one page, I can switch the layout of the printed page to landscape from portrait. In the landscape mode, Excel fits more columns than rows.

You can find portrait to landscape and vice versa switching option in the Orientation drop-down inside the Page Setup block of the Page Layout tab.

Printing Excel on One Page Using Print Area

If you want to take a quick printout of a small dataset from a large report in Microsoft Excel, you can set up a print area and print that on one page.

Also, this method is useful if you want to create a print area in a data entry worksheet that the data entry operators must print out at the end of the day as tasks are completed in a day.

You can carefully set up a print area in the worksheet and frequently check if the Print menu includes whole content or not. When you’ve successfully adjusted and included the whole point area within the single-page print preview, save the worksheet.

From now on, until someone resets the print area, when you press Ctrl + P on the source worksheet, your printer shall print the print area on one page.

To set up a print area, go to your source worksheet and highlight the content you want to include in the paper sheet.

Press Alt + P + R + S to use the Set Print Area command to create a permanent print area.

If you want to print the whole worksheet but don’t want to clear the print area, click the Print Active Sheets drop-down on the Print menu and click on the Ignore Print Area option.

Excel Print on One Page Using Print Selection

To use this feature, select a cell range in your worksheet for printing.

Go to the Print menu. There, click on the Print Active Sheets drop-down and choose Print Selection from the context menu.

You shall see the highlighted content on the worksheet in the print preview. If you see the whole content there, proceed with the printing task.

Sometimes, you may highlight cell ranges on your worksheet that might not fit on one page. Here, you can use the print scaling feature Fit Sheet on One Page to adjust the selected worksheet content on one page.

Adjust Row Height and Column Width

If you unusually increase the column width and row height of your Excel worksheet, reasonable numbers of cells won’t fit on one page.

Alternatively, if you’ve downloaded an Excel report with excessively large cell volumes, you’ll only be able to print very few cells in one paper.

In such cases, you can manually adjust the row height and column width to reduce the cell size to fit the maximum cells in the printable space.

To automatically adjust the row height and column width values to a minimum, highlight the dataset in your worksheet and go to the Cells commands block in the Home tab.

Click on the Format drop-down arrow and click on the following context menu options:

• AutoFit Row Height
• AutoFit Column Width

Now, you can check the print preview if the whole content fits in the printable space.

📒 Read More: 6 Ways to Make All Cells the Same Size in Microsoft Excel

Hide Unnecessary Data to Print on One Page

If your Excel report is too large to be printed on one page, you can hide unnecessary rows and columns in your worksheet to fit the rest of the dataset on one page.

For example, in the above dataset, columns I and J are going outside the printable area. I don’t need the Customer Name column though. So, I can hide this column to include the I and J columns.

To hide a column, you can right-click on the column text and click Hide in the context menu.

Now, the same example dataset is lengthy enough that it can’t be printed on one page. However, I only need up to row 30 to be printed. Again, I can hide the extra rows to reduce the content of the worksheet.

To hide rows, highlight the target rows from the row number line and right-click. A context menu will appear where you must click the Hide option.

Excel Print on One Page Using VBA

If you want to avoid all of these manual methods for printing Excel on one page, you can use a VBA macro. To create a VBA macro, you can either record your actions on the worksheet or write a script.

Writing a VBA script is more efficient than recording VBA macros. When you record a VBA macro, it only works correctly on a worksheet containing the same dataset structure as the source worksheet where you’ve recorded the macro. Contrarily, VBA script-based macros are flexible and intuitive.

If you don’t know how to write a VBA script, don’t worry. Use the following VBA script to automate the task to print Excel on one page:

Sub PrintDatasetOnOnePage()
    Dim ws As Worksheet
    Dim rng As Range
    Dim paperType As String
    Dim scaleFactor As Double
    
    ' Show input box to select dataset
    On Error Resume Next
    Set rng = Application.InputBox("Select the dataset to be printed:", Type:=8)
    On Error GoTo 0
    
    If rng Is Nothing Then
        MsgBox "No dataset selected. Printing canceled.", vbExclamation
        Exit Sub
    End If
    
    ' Show options for paper type choice
    paperType = InputBox("Choose paper type (A4, Letter, Legal, etc.):")
    
    ' Set scaling factor based on paper type
    Select Case UCase(paperType)
        Case "A4"
            scaleFactor = 1
        Case "LETTER"
            scaleFactor = 1
        Case "LEGAL"
            scaleFactor = 1
        Case Else
            MsgBox "Invalid paper type. Using default scaling.", vbExclamation
            scaleFactor = 1
    End Select
    
    ' Set print settings
    With rng.Parent.PageSetup
        .Zoom = False
        .FitToPagesTall = 1
        .FitToPagesWide = 1
        .PaperSize = xlPaperA4  ' Change to appropriate paper size
    End With
    
    ' Scale down content if necessary
    If rng.Width * scaleFactor > rng.Parent.Cells(1, 1).Width Then
        rng.Columns.AutoFit
    End If
    
    ' Print the dataset
    rng.PrintOut
End Sub

To learn how to create a VBA macro using this script, follow the steps mentioned in this article:

📒 Read More: How To Use The VBA Code You Find Online

This VBA macro shall ask you to select the dataset for printing on the active worksheet.

Excel shall also ask you to choose a page type, like A4, Legal, etc.

The VBA script reconfigures the print settings. Now, you can print the document from the Print menu.

Conclusions

It’s pretty easy to print Excel reports, datasets, tables, and visualizations on one page by using any of the methods mentioned in this article.

If the article helped you to learn the complicated Excel printing skill easily or you’ve got feedback for the article, comment below.