3 Simple Steps to Setting Your Print Area in Google Sheets
One of the best features of Google Sheets is its print area feature, which allows you to limit the amount of data you want to see when you’re printing your spreadsheet. This feature can be especially helpful if you’re working with large spreadsheets and don’t want to print every single cell in your spreadsheet—just the ones that are relevant to what you’re working on at the moment. In this guide, I’ll show you how to set your print area in Google Sheets, so you can get on with making the most of it.
Step 1: Set up
If you’re anything like me, you probably use Google Sheets for everything from tracking your budget to organizing your grocery list. And while Sheets is great for keeping all your data in one place, sometimes you need to print out a specific section of your spreadsheet. That’s where setting a print area comes in handy. A print area is the range of cells on the page that are printed when you hit Print. To set up a print area, select View and then Page Setup. In the Page Setup dialog box, set the width and height to match what will fit on your paper. You can also specify whether or not borders should be included by checking or unchecking that option.
Once you’ve made any necessary changes, click OK. Now you’ll see the print area highlighted on your screen (you can tell because it has a gray border around it). Next, highlight just the cells that you want to include in your printout (which I recommend doing with keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+Left Arrow for column and Ctrl+Right Arrow for row). Now go back to Page Setup again, but this time click Print Preview.
Step 2: Edit the spreadsheet
If you want to edit your print area, you can do so by clicking on the File tab, then selecting Print. From there, you can choose the specific cells that you want to print.
To select a range of cells, click on the first cell in the range and drag your mouse until all of the desired cells are highlighted. Then, click on the Print button.
If you want to clear your print area, simply click on the Clear button. You can also adjust the margins, paper size, and orientation before printing your spreadsheet. The default margins for sheets in Google Drive is .5 inches on each side but you can change it as needed. As for paper size, most templates come with standard A4 or letter sizes but if yours doesn’t, simply use the drop-down menu to select the one you need. Lastly, if you have a need for an alternate orientation (landscape or portrait), just check off whichever one suits your needs from the Orientation box below the Margins option.
Step 3: Get printing!
Now that you’ve defined your print area, it’s time to actually print your document. Depending on your printer, you may be able to print directly from Google Sheets. Otherwise, you can export your document as a PDF and then print the PDF. You can also save your workbook for offline use. To do this, click File -> Download As -> Microsoft Excel or Google Drive file -> Offline. Click on Create to download your file.
Next, open the downloaded spreadsheet and right-click the tab at the bottom of your screen labeled Sheet1. Select Rename and rename Sheet1 with an appropriate name such as Your_Company_Report. Finally, select File -> Save As -> Save as type: Excel (*.xlsx) (or another desired format) -> Enter a filename with today’s date attached -> Click Save. That’s it! You now have a report saved offline for future reference.
Note: If you need to edit your document, remember to refresh the webpage before continuing so that any new changes are reflected on your computer.
