Today’s tip is one that you may or may not know. It’s a trick I’ve used often, but I’ve recently learned that it’s not necessarily common knowledge. If you find yourself obsessing over column widths to try and get them all on one page, you’ll be pleased to know that there is an easier way to accomplish that – both per spreadsheet and as a global setting.
Excel (Desktop)
Change in the Print Dialog
If you’d like to use this setting on some spreadsheets, but not others, you can change it in the print settings dialog options. First, click File>Print or type ctrl+p to open the print settings.
Find the scaling option, and click the arrow on the right to see all options:
If you have several pages, you may want to select “fit all columns on one page” to avoid smushing your rows beyond recognition. To put all rows and columns on the same page, select “fit sheet on one page.” The print preview should indicate how the page will look when printed.
Change for All Future Spreadsheets
It may be the case that you always want to fit all columns, rows, or both on a single page for all spreadsheets. To do this, click the Page Layout tab and click the arrow in the lower right of the page setup area:
On the “Page” tab, adjust the “Fit to” section under the scaling header. Choose the desired default:
Other Software
To see the steps to achieve this in the web version of Excel or Google Sheets, check out this article by Tech-Talk. To learn more about what Tech-Talk offers, see our introductory post.
