Jan's Working with Numbers - Appendix: Pre-Print Checklist

Pre-Print Checklist

Read:

Inspect all the sheets you mean to print to be sure everything is finished. Are all the calculations there? Is the formatting of cells complete? Are all explanations and comments in place, especially what you meant to have visible on the sheet(s).

Excel may count cells as part of the spreadsheet that you thought you got rid of. This can happen if you have data and format it and then remove the data. The cells may look empty but they can have formatting assigned still. Excel may count them as part of the spreadsheet even though they are empty. Excel 97 is smarter about this that earlier versions, but you still must be careful. Deleting the cells rather than deleting the contents of the cells cures this particular problem.

Spell Check:

Spreadsheets don't normally benefit as much from Spell Check as your Word documents do. There aren't as many words, for one thing. But it still pays to let Excel check for errors. You don't want to misspell your column and row labels. Quite embarrassing.

Page Break Preview:

View the sheet(s) in Page Break Preview to see if Excel is dividing the way you want. You can drag the blue boundaries to change what is printed on which pages.

If you can't move the page breaks, you have grouped several sheets together. Check the sheet tabs. Right click on one and choose Ungroup if they were grouped

Page Setup:

Check the settings on all four tabs for each worksheet to avoid surprises. ( |

Page-	Page size and Orientation. Set Scaling or fit the spreadsheet to a certain number of pages wide and/or tall. Scaling ignores your page breaks.
Margins-	Top, bottom, left, right, header, and footer margins. Center the spreadsheet horizontally or vertically or both on the page.
Header/ Footer-	Create header/footer for each sheet. Check for overlapping sections.
Sheet-	Set Print Area. Print titles (certain rows or columns on every page). Gridlines. Row and column headings. Comments. Draft quality. Black and white only. If you set a Print Area, that area is considered the whole sheet fro printing! Nothing outside the Print Area will print, no matter what other choices you make.

Print Preview:

Always look at Print Preview before you print. Check the number of pages that will print, in the Status bar. Check for header/footer overlapping the cells. Check that the columns and rows are printing on the pages that you meant for them to print on.

Print options:

Pick a printer and the number of copies. Pick what to print - selection, active sheet(s), the whole workbook, or just certain pages. (Be sure you looked at Page Break Preview or Print Preview!)

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~~ 1 Cor. 10:31 ...whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. ~~