How to stretch a spreadsheet for printing

**PGKelly** · 08-14-2012, 06:31 AM

This is a recurring problem: I have a spreadsheet which should ideally be printed on a single A4 page, but File-Print defaults to multiple pages. When I select the Fit to One Page option I find the spreadsheet reduced to unreadably small print, with most of the page blank. Surely there is a way of automatically "stretching" the spreadsheet in one or both directions so that when printed it will just fill one page?

Peter

**shg** · 08-14-2012, 06:53 AM

If the output is unnecessarily compressed when printing, then it's printing more area than it should. Select the range of interest, Page Layout, > Print Area, Set print area.

**npamcpp** · 08-14-2012, 07:09 AM

In addition to shg's suggestion, you may want to consider adjusting one of the parameters in the "Fit to" dialog. By default, both "wide" and "tall" are set to 1. An A4 page has an aspect ratio of (very roughly) 4:3. If your spreadsheet data is in an area with an aspect ratio of 1:2, a lot of the page will remain blank. To avoid the white space in the print-out, you will have to spread it over several pages.

In such cases, set one of the parameters for "tall" and "wide" and let Excel do the rest. For a very wide spreadsheet, for example, select 1 page tall and leave the "wide" blank. The sheet will then print on several pages, but you may actually be able to read the print.

Excel will NOT change the width of columns or the height of cells to "stretch" the sheet to fit on one page. It will retain the aspect ratio of the print area and try to fit it on the space allocated. If that produces too much white space, allocate more pages to the dimension that has the white space.

**PGKelly** · 08-15-2012, 01:47 AM

Originally Posted by shg

If the output is unnecessarily compressed when printing, then it's printing more area than it should. Select the range of interest, Page Layout, > Print Area, Set print area.

Many thanks, shg. I don't think I have ever used View-Page Layout before. Usually I go straight to Select Range-File-Print Area-Set Print Area. Using Page Layout gives me a better result, though there is still a lot of blank space. Less than there was, though.

---------- Post added at 06:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:42 AM ----------

Originally Posted by npamcpp

In addition to shg's suggestion, you may want to consider adjusting one of the parameters in the "Fit to" dialog. By default, both "wide" and "tall" are set to 1. An A4 page has an aspect ratio of (very roughly) 4:3. If your spreadsheet data is in an area with an aspect ratio of 1:2, a lot of the page will remain blank. To avoid the white space in the print-out, you will have to spread it over several pages.

In such cases, set one of the parameters for "tall" and "wide" and let Excel do the rest. For a very wide spreadsheet, for example, select 1 page tall and leave the "wide" blank. The sheet will then print on several pages, but you may actually be able to read the print.

Excel will NOT change the width of columns or the height of cells to "stretch" the sheet to fit on one page. It will retain the aspect ratio of the print area and try to fit it on the space allocated. If that produces too much white space, allocate more pages to the dimension that has the white space.

Thank you, npamcpp. What you suggest is fine, except I am really talking about situations when I want to print on ONE page, for presentational purposes, and I can't understand hy Excel won't accommodate me by fitting my data to the page. I guess the problem is summed up in your last paragraph. But WHY won't Excel change the width of columns or the height of cells to fit a page? Considering how devilishly clever Excel is--really one of the wonders of the modern world, in my opinion--why can't they do this one little thing?