Excel 2010 Bible

Part I: Getting Started with Excel

188

Copying Page Setup Settings across Sheets ........................................................................

Each Excel worksheet has its own print setup options (orientation, margins, headers and footers,

and so on). These options are specified in the Page Setup group of the Page Layout tab.

When you add a new sheet to a workbook, it contains the default page setup settings. Here’s an

easy way to transfer the settings from one worksheet to additional worksheets:

1. Activate the sheet that contains the desired setup information. This is the source sheet.


2. Select the target sheets. Ctrl-click the sheet tabs of the sheets you want to update with
   the settings from the source sheet.


3. Click the dialog box launcher in the lower-right corner of the Page Layout ➪ Page
   Setup group.


4. When the Page Setup dialog box appears, click OK to close it.


5. Ungroup the sheets by right-clicking any selected sheet and choosing Ungroup Sheets
   from the shortcut menu. Because multiple sheets are selected when you close the Page
   Setup dialog box, the settings of the source sheet will be transferred to all target sheets.

Note
Two settings located on the Sheet tab of the Page Setup dialog box are not transferred: Print Area and Print
Titles. In addition, pictures in the header or footer are not transferred. n

Preventing Certain Cells from Being Printed .....................................................................

If your worksheet contains confidential information, you may want to print the worksheet but not

the confidential parts. You can use several techniques to prevent certain parts of a worksheet from

printing:

l Hide rows or columns. When you hide rows or columns, the hidden rows or columns

aren’t printed. Use the Home ➪ Cells ➪ Format drop-down list to hide the selected rows

or columns.

l (^) Hide cells or ranges.
l You can hide cells or ranges by making the text color the same color as the back-
ground color. Be aware, however, that this method may not work for all printers.
l You can hide cells by using a custom number format that consists of three semicolons
(;;;). See Chapter 24 for more information about using custom number formats.
l Mask an area. You can mask a confidential area of a worksheet by covering it with a rectan-
gle Shape. Choose Insert ➪ Illustrations ➪ Shapes and click the Rectangle Shape. You’ll
probably want to adjust the fill color to match the cell background and remove the border.