Last-Minute Adjustments with Print Preview

Using the Print Preview feature to preview your report and catch any last-minute problems saves you lots of trips to the printer and tons of wasted paper as well as affords you a way to make most of the necessary last-minute adjustments to the printout. These adjustments can include such things as resetting the margins and column widths, modifying headers and footers, and changing the page order, size, orientation, and scaling.

In Print Preview, text and graphics elements assigned to the cells in the Print Area (that is, the section of the current worksheet included in the printout) appear more-or-less as they will print. Unlike the standard onscreen view of the worksheet, Print Preview shows you the headers and footers defined for the report and allows you to page through the report one page at a time so that you can check the page breaks.

If you find any data errors when previewing a report, you can then edit them before you send the job to the printer by clicking the Close button to exit Print Preview and return to the normal worksheet view. If you don't find any problems, you can then send the job to the printer directly from the Print Preview window.

You can open the Print Preview window from the normal worksheet window, the Page Setup dialog box, or the Print dialog box:

• From the worksheet:
  Click the Print Preview button on the Standard toolbar or choose File → Print Preview.
• From the Page Setup dialog box (File → Page Setup):
  Click the Print Preview button on the right side of the dialog box beneath the Print button.
• From the Print dialog box (File → Print):
  Click the Preview button located in the lower-left corner of the dialog box.

When you first open the Print Preview window, the window displays a full-page view of the report's first page. To increase the page size to 100 percent, click the Zoom mouse pointer on the section of the page that you want to see in detail.

When the page is enlarged to 100 percent, you can use the scroll bars to bring new parts of the page into view in the Print Preview window. Or, if you prefer, you can use the keyboard:

• To scroll up or down, press the ↑ and ↓ keys or Page Up and Page Down.
• To scroll left to right, press ← and → or Ctrl+Page Up and Ctrl+Page Down.
• To position the left edge of the page on the screen, press the Home key.
• To position the right edge of the page on the screen, press End.
• To position the upper-left corner of the page on the screen, press Ctrl+Home.
• To position the lower-right corner on the screen, Press Ctrl+End.
• To position the left, right, top, or bottom corner of the page on the screen from whatever part of the page is displayed, press Ctrl+ an arrow key (←, →, ↑, or ↓).

To return to full-page view in the Print Preview window, click the arrowhead pointer somewhere on the page or click the Zoom button located at the top of the Print Preview window. If your report consists of more than one page, you can view succeeding pages by clicking the Next button, located at the top of the window, or by pressing the Page Down key. To review pages that you've already seen, click the Previous button or press Page Up.