Microsoft Excel — Effortlessly Streamline Your Printing Process with These Excel Macro Hacks!
We All Print Spreadsheets — Here’s How To Automate Some of those Tedious Steps
Introduction
You know the drill…
Create your spreadsheet, then go through the process to set it up for printing (either hardcopy or digital). Over and over and over…
Fortunately, these steps can be easily automated and done with a keyboard shortcut or button click!
Imagine the time these simple automation steps will save you and your team!
Here are 5 of my top “most tedious” printing tasks that I would suggest you consider automating.
1 — Set Page Layout
This macro snippet sets your worksheet to center content horizontally on page, landscape orientation, fit to 1 page wide (and option for multiple page length).
I would recommend also creating a “portrait” page setup macro code (same as above, change .Orientation = xlLandscape to .Orientation = xlPortrait.
2 — Manage Page Footers
Basic Print Footer
This adds the file name and page count to the worksheet.
The footer appears like this:
Include Date in Footer As Well
This VBA snippet includes the Date added to the bottom right of the printed page. You can access this VBA snippet here.
REMOVE all Footer Content
Of course, you won’t want a footer all the time. So here is the code to quickly clear your footer! If it’s easy to apply, it better be easy to remove!
3 — Control Printing of Gridlines
Sometimes you want gridlines on your printed sheet, sometimes you don’t!
These VBA snippets makes it easy to switch between the two.
Activate Printed Gridlines
Your report will appear as follows:
De-Activate Printed Gridlines
Getting Started
In order to access and use these macro commands, they need to be available to your active workbook. There are 3 ways to do this:
- Place the code in your current workbook (I Don’t Recommend This — you want these available regardless of the workbook you are in!)
- Create and install a Custom Add-In that include the code. Then available for use whenever you use Excel. It is also easily shareable with others — they just simply install the add-in. Check that out below:
- Add macros to your Personal Macro Workbook (personal.xlsb). Learn about it here:
With just a little bit of setup, you will be on your way to automating basic printing tasks in Excel!
What else would you automate? Let me know!
About Don
“It’s time for DIFFERENT”
Don is passionate about helping professionals and organizations keep up and adapt to the changing business world that we operate in.
