When users are required to print the entire data set or some specific part of the data set in Google Sheets, they have to set the print area so that the data will get printed on each page accurately.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to set the print area to print the data from Google Sheets.
Set Print Area to Print Only the Selected Range
Let’s say you have the below data set and you want to print only the selected range from that. To do so follow the below steps.
- First, highlight only the specific range which you want to print.
- After that press the “Ctrl +P” shortcut keys or go to the “File” tab and click on the “Print” option to open the “Print settings” dialog box.
- Here in the print settings, you will find the print preview of the selected range and other options to adjust the print area setting.
- Now, choose the “Selected cells” option within the “Print” field.
- You can also change the page orientation from landscape to portrait and under the “Scale” and “Margins” fields you can adjust the scaling and page margins of the page as you want.
- Once done, click on the “Next” button on the top right and your selected range will get printed.
Note: If you are using Firefox or Safari browser, after you click on “Next” as mentioned in the above step, it will not directly print the data, it will rather convert your selected range into a PDF file, which you can print anytime later by open that PDF doc.
Set Print Area to Print the Entire Spreadsheet Data
- First, press the “Ctrl +P” shortcut keys or click on the “Printer” icon to open the “Print Settings” dialog box.
- After that, choose the “Current Sheet” from the “Print” field, and at the same time, you can see the print preview and can also adjust the scale and margins if want from the available options.
- Now, click on the “Next” button at the top right corner to print the data within the current spreadsheet.
Note: While printing the entire data set, if you want to print the top header row on each page, you just have to lock the top row before printing the data.
Set Print Area Using Custom Page Breaks
Sometimes, you have a data set that will be get printed on multiple pages and you want to adjust the number of rows and columns to be printed on each page and you can do it quickly with the setting of the custom page break.
- First, press “Ctrl +P” to open the “Print Settings” dialog box and then click on the “SET CUSTOM PAGE BREAKS” option.
- In the preview, you can see there is one blue highlighted at the end of column F and one dotted blue line after row 26, which means on each page only columns up to F will get printed and rows up to 26 will get printed on the first page and so on.
- After that, click and hold on to the blue highlighted line and drag it to the end of column J to cover all the headers on each page.
- Now, similarly, click and hold on every blue dotted line at the rows and drag it above and down to adjust the number of rows to be printed on each page.
- Once you are done, click on “Confirm Breaks” at the top right of the screen.
- At this point, you can see in the “Print preview” has been updated based on the page breaks that we have made in the above steps.
- In the last, click on the “Next” button to print the data.
Create and Use Name Ranges as Print Area
If you have a large data set and you want to print the multiple selected ranges at any time, then you can create name ranges of that selected areas and whenever you need to print, just go to that name range, and then click “Ctrl +P” to print that range.
- First, create the name ranges for the selected ranges.
- After that, go to the “Data” tab and then choose “Named ranges” and it will show you the name ranges on the right side of the screen.
- Now, click on the name range that you want to print and then press “Ctrl +P” to open the print settings.
- In the “Print Settings” choose “Selected Cells” within the “Print” field and then click on the “Next” button to print it.
Adjust the Print Setting from the Available Options
Within the “Print Settings” dialog box, you will find multiple printing options which you can adjust as you want.
Page Orientation: With this, you can choose if you want to print the data in the “Landscape” or the “Portrait” position.
Scale: Sometimes, it covers much data per page which make the size of the printing data too small but, with this, you can adjust the printing size per page.
Margins: As the name suggests, with this you can adjust the border margins of the page.
Custom Page Breaks: With this, you can adjust the data to be get printed page by page.
Formatting: With this option, you can show or remove the grid lines and notes while printing the data. It also has the option to adjust the Alignment of the printing data.
Headers and Footers: With this, you can enable the headers and footers while printing and adjust the “Header and Footer” settings and alignment.