Printing Big Spreadsheets with Row and Column Headings

Gridlines, Row and Column Headings

Over the course of a semester, several students in my Excel class print their first Excel exercise for me to correct and ask how to print the Gridlines, column headings (not headers) for each page, and the row numbers and column letters that are not automatically printed with the spreadsheet. Added to this is printing information not found in the Print dialog box, but in the Page Setup dialog box, specifically the Print Titles section and the Print row and column headings checkbox options. What are they and what do they do!

Gridlines

Gridlines are not displayed when you open Excel for the first time. Put some ‘dummy data’ in a worksheet, and do a Print Preview. You will see the data, but no gridlines. You must turn on the gridlines with the following steps: Click File, Page Setup, check-off the box labeled Gridlines, and click the OK button. Do a Print Preview to verify gridlines are present, which will be displayed on the printed spreadsheet.

Row and Column Headings

When a spreadsheet length or width exceeds one page, the labels that name each column and the items of each row are not displayed after the first page. Print Titles allows the headings of a column and row beyond page one to be displayed and printed. The Print Titles section has two parts: Rows to repeat at the top, and Columns to repeat at left. The top row usually has descriptive headings placed in each column that describes the contents of that column, while the first column usually contains descriptive labels that describe the contents in each row. This becomes very helpful when the spreadsheet exceeds one page. When this happens, column titles and the row items are clearly marked on each page, so the reader does not have to flip back and forth between pages to identify the correct rows and column data.

The Print row and column headings referred to the display of the 256 columns labeled A through IV (that’s the letter I and the letter V, not the Roman Numerals), and row headings 1 through 65536. To display the row and column headings, put a checkmark in the Print row and column headings box in the Page Setup dialog box.

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