Lesson 7: Printing and Sharing Workbooks in Excel

Welcome to Lesson 7 of our Excel tutorial series! After mastering data entry, formatting, and visualization with charts, it’s time to learn how to share your work and make it presentable on paper. This lesson will cover the essentials of preparing your Excel workbooks for printing and sharing, ensuring your data looks as good on paper as it does on screen. Let’s get started!

Setting Up Your Page for Printing

Before printing your Excel workbook, you’ll want to adjust the page setup to ensure your document prints correctly.

• Page Layout View: Switch to the “Page Layout” view from the View tab for a better sense of how your document will look when printed.
• Page Setup: Go to the Page Layout tab, where you can adjust settings like margins, orientation (portrait or landscape), and size (e.g., A4, Letter).
• Print Area: Select the range of cells you wish to print, then go to Page Layout > Print Area > Set Print Area. This restricts the printed document to your selection.

Practice Exercise: Try setting a print area and adjusting the page setup options for one of your worksheets.

Headers and Footers

Headers and footers can add important information to your printed documents, like page numbers, titles, or dates.

• Adding Headers and Footers: In the Page Layout view, click on “Header & Footer” to add customized text to the top or bottom of your document.
• Options: You can use predefined headers and footers or create custom ones with your text, page numbers, dates, and more.

Practice Exercise: Add a header with the title of your document and a footer with the page number.

Printing Your Worksheet

With your page setup and content ready, it’s time to print your worksheet.

• Print Preview: Always check your document in Print Preview (accessible from the File > Print menu) before printing. This gives you one last look to ensure everything is positioned correctly.
• Printer Settings: In the Print menu, you can choose your printer, specify the number of copies, and decide whether to print the entire workbook or only the active sheets.

Practice Exercise: Use Print Preview to check your document, then print a single copy of your worksheet.

Sharing Workbooks

Excel also makes it easy to share your workbooks with others, either by email or through cloud services like OneDrive.

• Email: You can directly email your workbook from Excel by going to File > Share > Email. You can send it as an attachment, a PDF, or an XPS document.
• OneDrive: To share via OneDrive, save your workbook to your OneDrive folder, then use the Share option to send a link to your collaborators. This allows for real-time collaboration.

Practice Exercise: Try sharing a workbook via email with yourself or a friend. If you have access to OneDrive, experiment with saving and sharing a file through OneDrive.

Wrapping Up

Printing and sharing your Excel workbooks are crucial final steps in your data analysis process. By understanding how to effectively prepare your documents for printing and sharing them with colleagues or clients, you ensure your work can be appreciated both onscreen and in print.

For Next Time

In our next lesson, we’ll introduce more advanced Excel features, including data sorting and filtering, to help you manage large datasets more efficiently. Practice the printing and sharing techniques you’ve learned today to ensure your work is presentation-ready. See you in the next lesson!