how do I set print area for spreadsheet?

[Jungle1]

Have tried both deleting and designating thru icons at top of screen as well as via various links entitled Print, Print Preview, etc. When began the print area came up one column short of what I need. The right side margin showed plenty of room left on the paper but also unable to reset the margin. Since fumbling around trying to get what I want the 13 columns that I had are now squeezed to less than half of the paper. I am a 75 year old male engineer that has been able to do this easily with Excel.

Thank you in advance for helping me.

Jim Dolloff

[erAck]

If you want to fit your data on a sheet of paper (at least that’s what I understood) then in the Print Preview click the Format Page icon (or menu Format → Page…) and in the dialog go to the Sheet tab, under Scale select one of the “Fit print range(s) …” option and then enter the number of pages. Also check that if you defined print ranges under Format → Print Ranges… these ranges are actually what you want to print, and either adjust or clear or reset.

[Hrbrgr]

Whether the settings have succeeded, check with the print preview, without wasting paper.

[niji-no-megami]

I can confirm that this works! Thank you! For those unable to find the prompt, I’ve retyped this in an easier to follow format:

1. Select the area you’d like to print

2. Go to Format → print ranges → define

3. Go to Format → Page → Sheet → Fit print ranges on number of pages, then type “1” or however many pages you’d like

4. Print → Look at Print preview to make sure only 1 (or however many pages desired) is printed.

[jelabarre59]

Not a solution, but an additional problem. You say how to make a printout fit on one page, but this presumes the programme has a clue of WHAT you want to do a print preview on. You may highlight a group of cells to be printed, but “Print Preview” ignores this, and therefore you can’t adjust your print settings because it’s showing you a different set of cells to print
If, however, you highlight the cells, bring up “Print”, you can tell it to print just the highlighted cells. However, now the print dialogue gives you NO way to correct the print formatting, and it may cut off the edges of your printout because it will quite happily put cells out behind the margins (where it won’t print).

This is the ONE thing where I find MS Excel works far better; printing highlighted cells without major hackery (such as just deleting everything else in the file but the specific thing you want to print). It’s exceedingly frustrating, as I have NO desire to use MS Excel.
And it isn’t like the code to correct the formatting doesn’t exist; it’s right there in the “Print Preview” dialogue. The programme just meeds to point to those options. Alternatively, “Print Preview” needs an option to preview just the highlighted cells (probably even simpler, since it would be the same drop-down box already available in the “Print” dialogue.

[Lox]

First highlight the cells you want to print, then menu Format / Print Ranges / “Define”. You can set multiple print ranges by highlighting other regions and choose “Add”, and they will appear on different printed pages.
It is very unfortunate that the Print Ranges menu is not accessible from the Print dialog or Print Preview mode.

[Cambsuser]

I have been sent a small one-page Excel file which I have opened in Libreoffice Calc.
The file has dotted lines horizontally and vertically which seem to define a print area. The page unnecessarily prints on two sheets, giving a result hard to read.
I would like to alter the defined print area so the small page easily fits on one sheet of paper, which it would if I could move the dotted lines. However nothing in the suggested answers enables me to define a different print area. What should I do?

[rslive]

In LibreOffice 7.4.2.3 -
Format - Page Style… - Sheet tab - In Scale choose Reduce/enlarge printout, and choose a higher percentage and see whether it occupies more space by doing print preview.