Change Page Orientation and Scaling: MS Excel

When you are creating small worksheets, you don't think about changing the direction of the page, but some worksheets and charts require the page to be wider than it is tall.

Similar to landscape paintings that typically are wider than they are tall, landscape page orientation enables you to fit wider items on the page. A page that is taller than it is wide has what is called portrait orientation, like portraits of people.

Scaling lets you specify a certain percent to reduce or enlarge your worksheet.

The Fit to Page feature allows you to force the worksheet to print on a specific number of pages, without having to calculate the percent yourself.

When you need to print a worksheet that is too large to fit on the page without making the font very small, you use the orientation and scaling features. For instance, you may have a worksheet with data for January through December, and so you need the extra width more than the height.

• Use the Page Setup dialog box to adjust orientation and scaling.
   
• Choose File | Page Setup.
   
• Click the Page tab to access the dialog box.

Specify one of the following settings:

• Adjust to ____% of normal size. Click the arrows to change the percent or type a percent in the box to enlarge or reduce the size of the printout by a certain percent.
   
• Fit to ____ pages wide by ____ tall. Click the arrows or type the number of pages you want. For example, to squeeze the whole thing onto a single page, make it 1 page wide by 1 page tall. To allow it to span two pages side by side, choose 2 pages wide by 1 tall. When you have a worksheet that is really long, but one little column runs over onto a second page wise, you can choose 1 page wide and leave blank the number of pages tall for it to flow as long as it wants.
   
• Paper size. If your printer can handle larger page sizes, such as legal size paper (8 1/2 X 14) you might be able to fit a large worksheet on one page.

Using the options on the Page tab of the Page Setup dialog box, you can control how you fit a large worksheet on the printed page.

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