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Microsoft Excel’s page formatting features are accessed by clicking on the page layout tab of the Excel ribbon. When working with page formatting, you may also find it useful to enter page layout mode by clicking on the page layout button in the status bar. Adjust the zoom as required and you now have a constantly updated preview of how your document will look when it prints out.

Excel also displays the number of pages required to print a document on the status bar. Some worksheets would probably benefit from changing the orientation to landscape. This often enables you to fit all the columns onto a single page. To change the orientation, choose Orientation and then Landscape.

Excel offers three ways of changing the margins. The first is to click on the Margins button and choose one of the presets. Here, you’ll find four options: the last settings used, normal, wide and narrow. One of these settings may well be ideal for your data. If not, the second method of modifying margins is to enter custom settings. This is done by choosing Custom Margins in the Margins drop down menu.

When entering margin settings in this window, it is important to realise that there’s a difference between left and right margins and also top and bottom margins. The figure you enter in the left and top boxes will be faithfully reproduced by Excel. So, for example, if we set the left margin to 3 cm, you will have precisely 3 cm on the left-hand margin. However, because Excel never prints a fragment of a row or a fragment of a column and only prints complete rows and columns, the figure you enter on the right will be the minimum margin rather than a figure which Excel can faithfully reproduce each time. And the same applies to the bottom margin setting.

The third method of modifying margins is perhaps the best of all. It’s also the most interactive. Simply position the cursor on the left of the ruler and drag to the left or right to change the margins. Excel immediately updates the preview of your page and shows you the actual margin setting. You can continue dragging until you are happy with the margins.

Another simple way of changing the way in which your data will print is to change the paper size. In many cases, you can reduce the number of pages required by using A3 paper instead of A4. Naturally, it’s only possible to change the paper size in this way if you have a printer capable of handling that paper size. If you output most of your documents to PDF, paper size will not be a problem and changing the paper size in this way is often a good solution.

The author is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel 2007 Classes in London and throughout the UK.

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Using Quick Print and Print Preview in Excel

Excel’s Quick Print facility allows you to send a document to the default printer without the need of entering values in a dialog box. If the Quick Print button is not already displayed on your Quick Access Toolbar, simply choose it from the Customize Quick Access Toolbar drop-down menu. You will notice that the tooltip which appears when you position the mouse over the Quick Print button has the name of the default printer in brackets. If the printer that is displayed is not the one you anticipated you can simply use the regular Print command instead.

If like a growing number of Word users, most of your documents are sent electronically, you may have Adobe PDF set as the default printer. If this is the case, when you click the Quick Print button, you will be prompted to save the file since printing to Adobe PDF means producing a disc file.

Whatever your default printer, Excel will print the documents using its default settings: moderate margins, no header or footer, no column or row headings and no gridlines. If the document cannot be printed on a single page, Excel will produce multiple pages moving down first and then across. Having printed the document Excel paginates your worksheet and subsequently displays the page boundaries as dotted lines.

Whereas Quick Print sends the document to the printer straight away, Print Preview offers a method of previewing the document prior to sending it to the printer and is often a useful precaution. To access Print Preview, click on the Office button in the top left of your screen, choose Print and then Print Preview.

If the preview of the document looks fine, simply click on the print button to send the document of the printer. If the document needs to be modified in order to be printed correctly, one option is to click on Page Setup. This gives you access to settings such as the orientation, margins, header and footer, as well as other advanced features.

You also have the option of zooming in on your data by clicking on the zoom button. When you click the zoom button a second time, the whole page is displayed once more. Excel allows you to preview all the pages by clicking on the Next and Previous buttons.

You can also show or hide margins. Margins consist of dotted lines with drag handles at the end of each line. The margins displayed in Print Preview are fairly comprehensive. Firstly, we have the page margins: top, bottom, left and right. Next, we have margins to control the area available to headers and footers. Finally, we have drag handles allowing us to change the column widths. You will often find that you can reduce the number of pages required to print a document simply by changing the various margins.

Author is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel Training Courses in London and throughout the UK.

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The Split command is found in the View Tab of the Microsoft Excel 2007 Ribbon. It allows you to split an Excel spreadsheet window into either two or four separate panes and is particularly useful for comparing data in different parts of a large worksheet.

To use the Split command, first activate the cell where you want the split to occur then click on the split button. The horizontal and vertical bars marking the split can be repositioned simply by dragging. Separate scrollbars are also available for each section; so, in the case of a vertical and horizontal split, you end up with two horizontal scrollbars and two vertical scrollbars. To remove the split, simply click on the split button once more.

A second and more intuitive way of using the split command is to use the split boxes. These are located above the vertical scroll bar and to the right of the horizontal scroll bar. Let’s say, for example, that we have a spreadsheet containing rows of sales figures. Suppose we want to be able to compare the sales figures of one particular person with the sales figures of other individuals. We can create two vertical windows by dragging the vertical split box. We can then scroll to make the first person’s sales figures visible and in the top pane and then do the same to position the sales figures of any other sales person in the bottom pane.

Excel offers us a really simple way of removing the split. Simply double-click on the split line.

Similarly let’s now say we want to focus on the total for each individual and that the totals are shown in column J. We can create both a vertical and horizontal split by dragging each of the two split boxes. We can then leave the salesperson’s name displayed in the left pane while in the pane on the right we can scroll across to make the total visible.

As we scroll up and down, we now see the totals for each sales person next to the sales person’s name. If we would also like the heading to remain in place, we simply make the top pane one row deep, displaying only the headings while we scroll the bottom pane up and down.

When we finish working with our totals, we can remove the vertical split and leave the horizontal split in place. To do this, we simply double-click on the vertical split line. To return to a normal window we would also double-click on the horizontal split line.

The writer of this article is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft Excel Training Courses in Birmingham, London, Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Cambridge, Bradford, Liverpool and throughout the UK.

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Many of the worksheets that are created in Microsoft Excel contain headings in the top row or left column of the sheet. Normally when we scroll down the sheet, any headings at the top will disappear. Similarly, if we scroll to the right, any headings on the left will disappear. Excel has two commands which can be used to keep these headings in place as we scroll through the worksheet: freeze panes and split panes. We will discuss techniques for splitting panes in another article. This article focuses on the use of the Freeze Panes commane.

The Freeze Panes command, which is located in the View Tab of the Excel Ribbon, allows us to freeze our headings so that, as we scroll the sheet, headings remain in view.

Excel offers us three options: firstly, we can choose “Freeze Top Row”. A bold horizontal line is then displayed underneath the first row which extends into the row headings. As we scroll down the worksheet, the headings at the top of the sheet remain in view. Similarly, we can choose “Freeze First Column”. This time, the bold line extends to the right of the first column and into the column heading area. Then, as we scroll to the right, the first column remains frozen so that we can see the headings it contains and compare them with the data in the adjacent cells. To return to normal scrolling, we simply choose “Unfreeze Panes” in the “Freeze Panes” drop-down menu.

It is also possible to freeze an arbitrary number of rows and columns. To do this, select the cell below the last row you want frozen and to the right of the last column you want frozen. So, for example, to freeze the first row and the first column you would select cell “B2″. Having highlighted the cell, in the “Freeze Panes” drop-down menu, you would then choose “Freeze Panes”.

This time, there are two bold lines: one indicating the column that is frozen and one indicating the row that is frozen. Then, as we scroll down the first row remains frozen and, similarly, when we scroll to the right the first column remains frozen. Once again, to return to normal behavior, we simply choose “Unfreeze Panes” in the “Freeze Panes” drop-down menu.

Since this command allows us to freeze any number of rows or columns, if you are working on a large worksheet perhaps containing multiple row and column headings, you will probably find it pretty much an essential feature.

The writer of this article is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Excel 2007 Classes in Birmingham, London, Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Cambridge, Bradford, Liverpool and throughout the UK.

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In order to create formula in Excel 2007, begin by typing an equal sign: this distinguishes it from other types of data. A formula consists of groups of expressions. There are three key elements in these expressions: arithmetic operators, such as add and subtract; functions; and references to worksheet.

To create a formula which returns the total of two of the numbers in a spreadsheet (say 24 and 12), you simply type “=24 12″. When you press the Enter key, you would get the correct result. However, the formula would not be linked to the two cells containing the numbers. If the entry in either of the cells were to change, the formula would still give the old result.

Obviously, the solution is to ensure that our formula contains a reference to the two cells in question. The simplest way of doing this is to click on the first cell having typed “=”. Excel then automatically creates a reference to that cell. Next type the plus sign and click on the second cell. Excel creates a reference to the second cell and we then confirm the formula either by clicking on the Enter button (on the left of the formula bar) or pressing the Enter key on the keyboard.

Once your formula contains a reference to these two cells, any time the contents of the cells change, the result produced by formula will be updated.

If this were the only way of performing calculations in Excel, formulas would become very long and extremely complex. To avoid this situation, we can use Excel’s built-in functions. Functions carry out complex mathematical calculations without the user having to worry about how the result is reached.

For example, let’s say that we wanted to total the contents of a hundred different cells. If we relied purely on the plus sign, we would end up creating a formula with a hundred different arguments; in other words, a reference to each an every cell. Instead, we can simply use the SUM function.

To insert a function into a formula, type an equal sign followed by the name of the function. Next, type open parentheses and enter the arguments of the function. The arguments of a function are the parameters required by that function in order to return a result. When using the SUM function, the arguments are the references of the cells contain the numbers we want to total. We can generate these references by clicking or dragging across the cells in question.

Having entered references to all the cells containing numbers that we want to total, press the Enter key to add the formula to the worksheet. You don’t even need to put in the closing parentheses. Excel will close them automatically.

The author is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Excel classes in London and all over the UK.

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