INTHEBLACK February 2022 - Magazine - Page 72
WORK SMART
// E XC E L YO U R S E L F
20
STORY NEALE BLACKWOOD CPA
EXCEL VIEWS
YEARS
OF EXCEL
YOURSELF
PRINTING IN EXCEL CAN PRESENT CHALLENGES, BUT THESE
CAN BE SOLVED BY USING THE ICONS IN THE WORKBOOK
VIEWS SECTION OF THE VIEW RIBBON TAB.
T
he standard grid view of Excel is called
the Normal view. The other three icons in
Figure 01 have specialised features that
can make printing easier.
PAGE BREAK PREVIEW ICON
This view changes the Excel grid to show
what will be printed (white background) and
what won’t be printed (grey background)
– see Figure 02. It also displays the page
numbers as a watermark on the screen. This
helps you understand the sequence of your
printout.
This view displays the print area and page
breaks with solid blue lines. The dotted blue
lines are where Excel estimates the pages will
break based on the current print settings.
You can click and drag the dotted blue lines
to move the page breaks. The dotted lines
become solid lines when you move them.
Moving an automatic page break may also
amend the zoom percentage being used in
printing. Check the Page Layout ribbon tab
(Figure 03) to see the Scale percentage.
Anything below 75 per cent tends to be
difficult to read.
This view has extra print options when
you right-click on the sheet – see Figure 04.
PAGE LAYOUT ICON
This view makes Excel look like Word and
provides the most accurate representation of
how the pages will look printed out. Note that
this view is not compatible with the Freeze
Panes feature, also on the View ribbon.
Freeze Panes keeps rows at the top of the
grid and columns to the left. If you have used
Freeze Panes, a warning message is displayed
before allowing you to proceed.
This view is ideal if you are creating headers
or footers. You can click in the header or
footer sections and a new ribbon will display
with all the available options – see Figure 05.
The default display on this view is to show the
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margins on the pages. You can click the icon
between the pages to hide the margins.
The two icons on the left of the ribbon
offer standard header and footer entries via a
dropdown – see Figure 06.
SMALL ICONS
At the bottom right-hand corner of the Excel
screen (to the left of the zoom percentage)
are three small icons for the three different
views. The sequence of the icons from right to
left is Normal, Page Layout and Page Break
Preview – see Figure 07.
CUSTOM VIEWS ICON
The idea behind the Custom Views feature is
that you can capture the following display and
print settings at a point in time, including hidden
rows or columns in all the sheets, print settings in
all the sheets and hidden/visible sheets. You can
then reinstate all the settings you captured by
selecting a specific custom view.
For all its possibilities, custom views also
has some limitations.
You cannot use custom views if you have a
formatted table in the file. Adding a formatted
table to a file with custom views will disable
access or use of custom views.
A custom view captures hidden rows at the
time it is created. If you use a filter to hide or