If you’re like me, you have a litany of Excel printing horror stories to tell. It seems that when things go wrong when printing an Excel worksheet they never go wrong by halves – it is usually a spectacular disaster.

Hit the big red switch

Well your printer probably doesn’t have a big red switch but it will have an OFF button. When the printer starts coughing up pages of unwanted garbage – hit the off switch, cancel the print job and then start hunting for the problem.

To help you, I’ve put together my best tips and troubleshooting techniques for printing right in Excel – every time.

Understand what prints

When you click the Print button to print an Excel worksheet, Excel prints everything that’s on that worksheet. Sometimes there are cells filled that you may not realize are filled and the result is you will print pages you don’t mean to print.

Use Print Preview

Your first and best tool is the Print Preview option in Excel – it shows you how many pages will print and if you’re expecting one page and it’s preparing for 50 you know something is very wrong. In Excel 2010 things are easier than ever before and the print preview appears whenever you choose File > Print.

Selecting what to print

One common problem in Excel is having a filled cell well out of view. You might have mistakenly moved to a faraway cell and typed something – even something as innocuous as a space is all it takes and that worksheet cell contains data. So, when you click the Print button, Excel will print everything up to and including the cell containing that space. To you it looks like reams of empty paper – to Excel it all makes perfect sense.

When this happens to you there are two choices – find and delete the problem cell or use a workaround. The workaround involves selecting the area to print before printing it. To do this, select the area to print and choose File > Print – don’t click the Print icon if you have one. In Excel 2007 choose Office button > Print > Print Preview. When the Print dialog appears, click the Selection option and only the selected area will print.

Inconvenient page breaks

Sometimes, when Excel divides up a large worksheet over a series of pages it doesn’t put the page break in the most sensible place. You can preview page breaks before you print and make adjustments to them by selecting the View > Page Break Preview (View tab > Page Break Preview in Excel 2007 and 2010). When you do this, you’ll see dashed lines on the screen showing the page breaks.

To change a page break you can add your own but this must be done inside a current page so that you’re effectively making the page smaller. You can’t make a page longer or wider using this technique.

To add a manual page break, click and select the column or row which should trigger the page break and choose Insert > Page Break (in Excel 2007 and  2010, choose Page Layout tab > Page Breaks > Insert Page Break). You can also drag on the dashed lines to move them around the screen and reorganize your page layout.

Missing column headings

When a worksheet prints over multiple pages – all pages from page 2 onwards will be missing row or column headings or both. The data on the pages will be hard to understand unless you tape the pages together.

A better solution is to print column and row headings on every page and, to do this, choose Page Layout > Print Titles to open the Page Setup dialog at the Sheet tab. Click in the Rows To Repeat At Top box and type the row letters in the format $1:$1 to print the first row or $1:$2 to print the first two rows on each page. In the Columns To Repeat At Left box, type $A:$A to print the first column as row headings or $A:$B to print the first two columns.

Shrink to fit

When a worksheet is only a little too big to print on a single sheet of paper, you can shrink it to fit. Choose File > Print and choose an option from the Scaling list which probably currently shows as No Scaling.

Choose Fit Sheet on One Page to scale the sheet down so it all prints on one sheet of paper. Other options include Fit all Columns on One Page and Fit All Rows on One Page which scale the worksheet to fit either one page wide or one page lengthwise. Choose Custom Scaling Options if none of these settings is exactly what you need.

Print multiple sheets on a page

If you’ve tried to print part of one sheet and part of another on a single sheet of paper you know this is a futile exercise – Excel can’t do it because every sheet prints on new page even if it contains only a few cells of data.

There is a workaround that involves using the Camera tool to take a snapshot of the worksheet areas you want to print and place these on a single worksheet for printing.

To add the Camera tool to the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar), choose Options > Quick Access Toolbar and from the dropdown list choose Commands Not in the Ribbon, locate the Camera and click Add to add it to the QAT.

Now select the first area to print, and take a picture of it by clicking the Camera icon. Move to a new worksheet and click where the snapshot image should appear. Immediately you click on the spreadsheet a snapshot of what you captured will be inserted.

Now go back and take a snapshot of the other worksheet and add it to your new sheet. You can do this as many times as you need to. Then print the worksheet and all the ‘snapshots’ will print on the one page. Snapshots are live views so if the data in the original sheet changes then the snapshot will change too.

Print a chart

To print just a chart and not all the worksheet detail around it, click the chart to select it. Now choose File > Print to locate all the options you have for sizing and printing your chart. When you click the Print button, only the chart will print.

- using multiple axes in Excel

- adding pictures to charts

- resize chart bars

- add data to charts

-deal with missing data

Creating a basic chart in Excel is simple but when your data requires just a little bit extra attention to look its best, you’ll need to delve into the depths of the Excel charting tools. Here I’ll show you five ways of taming unruly data in Microsoft Excel.

Using Multiple Axes

When you have a mix of data to use such as very large values and some very small ones like percentages you’ll find that the percentages disappear when they are plotted against the larger data values.

You can solve the problem by adding a second axis for the smaller values. To do this, click on the chart and then choose Chart Tools > Layout tab and from the selector in the top left of the Ribbon select the chart series that you cannot see clearly on the chart. Then click the Format Selection icon which is directly below this.

When the dialog appears click Series Options and click Secondary Axis to plot this series on a new axis which has a different scale applied to it.

Now, with the series still selected, select Chart Tools > Design tab and choose Change Chart Type. Because you have only part of the chart selected whatever option you choose now will be applied to only the selected data series. Choose a contrasting chart type for this series to draw attention to the fact that it is plotted against a different axis. A good combination where you are using a column chart for the large values is to use a Line Chart for the very small values.

To finish, from the Chart Tools > Layout tab select Axes and name your primary and secondary vertical axes to indicate what is being displayed on those axes. Formatting the axis titles so they match the colour of the series plotted on them will help the reader understand your chart.

Pictures in Charts

Make your charts illustrate what their contents are all about by adding a picture to the chart. To do this click the chart to select it and, from the Chart Tools > Format tab click the dropdown list in the top left corner and choose Plot Area to place the image behind the chart or choose Chart Area to fill the entire chart box with the image.

Choose either Format Selection which is immediately under the dropdown list. Select Fill and then click Picture or Texture Fill. Select File to open an image on your disk or choose Clip Art to use a clipart image. When you insert the image it will appear behind the chart. To make the picture partially transparent, adjust the transparency slider. If you place your image on the Chart Area you may want to select and set the Plot Area Fill to No Fill or make it partially transparent so you can see the image more clearly.

Re-size Chart Bars

By default, Bar and Column charts are created with the bars and columns a preset width. If you would prefer the gaps to be smaller and the bars wider, you can do so. First choose Chart Tools > Layout tab and select one of your chart series from the list. Then choose the Format Selection option immediately under this and select Series Options from the Format Data Series dialog. Adjust the Gap Width slider to make the space between bars or columns wider or narrower – if you make the gap narrower, the bars become wider and vice versa.

Overlap data in charts

If you have plotted multiple series on your chart, you can overlap the bars or columns by dragging the Series Overlap slider towards Overlapped. This overlaps the bars or columns so they will be wider still as well as being overlapped.

Add New Data to a chart

In Excel 2003 and earlier versions you could add data to a chart by selecting the data and dragging and dropping it onto the chart. This behaviour was discontinued in Excel 2007 and 2010 making it more difficult than previously to add data to a chart.

One method of adding data to a chart in Excel 2007 and 2010 is to select the new data including the column heading if you previously included column headings in your chart data selection and click the Copy button on the Home tab of the ribbon. Now click on a data series in the chart and press Ctrl + V to paste the data into the chart.

The other method of adding data is to click the chart to select it and choose Chart Tools > Design tab > Select Data. In this dialog you will see the data that is already plotted in your chart. The series names appear in the panel on the left and the category or horizontal axis data appears in the right hand panel.

To add data, click the Add button and click on the series name to add – this is the cell or cells which contain the heading that should appear in the legend for this series. Then click in the Series Value box and select the data to include in the chart (but don’t include the headings you just selected). When you do this the chart will automatically expand to show the data that you have just added to it so you can check the results. Click Ok twice to finish.

Control Missing Data

When your data is incomplete such as where some of it is missing you may find your chart looks strange because of the way Excel plots missing data. You can change the way that missing data is handled by clicking on the chart to select it and choose Chart Tools > Design tab > Select Data and click the Hidden and Empty Cells button.

A dialog appears with three options for plotting the empty cells: Gaps, Zero and Connect data points with line. Select the option that is best for your data and click Ok twice. All the data that is missing from your charted range will be dealt according to the option you selected.

1          Calculating workdays

To calculate the number of days between two dates and taking into account holidays use the =NETWORKDAYS function. Start by placing the dates for the holidays in a range of cells across a row or down a column. Select this range and name it holidays using Formulas > Define Name.

This function will calculate the number of workdays between two dates placed in cell A1 and A2, taking into account the days you’ve described as being holidays:

=NETWORKDAYS(A1,A2,Holidays)

If the NETWORKDAYS function returns an error make sure that you have the Analysis Toolpak installed by choosing File > Options > Add-ins > Excel Add-ins > Go.

Make sure the checkbox for the Add-in is selected:

2          Calculating Averages

The AVERAGE function can be used to calculate the average of a series of numbers. The syntax is =AVERAGE(StartCell:EndCell), where StartCell is the first cell in the range and EndCell is the last cell.

Be aware that when you make an AVERAGE calculation, blank (empty cells) are ignored. So, for example, the average of four cells, three of which contain the number four and one of which is blank, is four.

If you place a zero in the empty cell then the Average is 3. If you intend blank cells to represent the value zero you should place a zero in all empty cells before making the calculation.

3          Date functions

Two of Excel’s functions =NOW() and =TODAY() allow you to insert the current date and time or just the current date into a cell. If you do this and see a number of around 39,000 this is the number of days since the 1^st of January 1900 and is how dates are calculated. Simply format this number as a date using the Format > Cell > Number Format options.

4          Referring to a cell

One difficulty which stumps even seasoned Excel users is how to refer to the contents of one cell in the current cell. For example, if cell A2 should contain the same contents as cell C2 simply type =C2 in cell A2. Linking cells like this ensures that when the value in C2 changes, the value in cell A2 will change to match it. You can achieve a similar result across worksheets by prefixing the cell reference with the worksheet name. For example, this formula refers to the contents of cell C2 on Sheet1: =Sheet1!C2.

5          Multiply and Add

Often when you are making calculations you need to multiply the contents of one column by the values in a second column and then add the results. You might do this, for example, if you have a list of product numbers in stock and you need to multiply these by the cost price and sum it to obtain an inventory value. To do this use the SUMPRODUCT function, the syntax of which is =SUMPRODUCT(FirstRange,SecondRange). For example, =SUMPRODUCT(A2:A25,B2:B25) will multiply each of the cells in the range in column A by the corresponding cell in the range in column B and then total the result.

6          Making choices

The IF function lets you make a choice in your worksheet. For example, if cell A2 contains a value of Y or N depending on whether a discount is applicable, you can use the value in that cell to calculate the discount in another cell. If the discount is 10% this formula will calculate the discount on a price in cell A3:

=IF(A2 =”Y”,0.1*A3, 0)

The formula checks cell A2 to see if a discount is to be allowed and, if so, the discount is calculated using the total price in cell A3. If not, the discount is set to 0.

7          Finding Roots

Excel has a special function SQRT for finding the square root of a number. So, for example, the square root of 25 can be calculated using =SQRT(25). There is, however, no corresponding function for calculating the cube or any other root of a number. You can, however, calculate this using a simple formula if you know that the square root of 25 can be written mathematically as =25^(1/2). By extension, the cube root can be calculated by typing =25^(1/3).