Printing in Formulas View

Reading Printing in Formulas View  

So now you know a lot about writing formulas in Excel, but the answers to those formulas are what show up on the Excel spreadsheet. If you want to share your formulas in a printed format with someone, you will need to be able to see them on the spreadsheet for them to print. There are two ways to get to the Formulas view.

The first way to see the formulas on the page is to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl and the `/~ key, which is located either just to the left of the number 1 key on a standard US keyboard or below the Esc key on most keyboards (see keyboard diagram below). These keys together are a toggle switch, which means that you can press them once to change something and then press them again to change it back.

Figure 1

The second way to show formulas on the worksheet is to go to the Formulas ribbon and click Show Formulas in the Formula Auditing grouping (as shown below). 

Figure 2

Another thing to remember when printing formulas is that the formulas often take up much more space than the answer. This means that they may push onto another page. To keep them confined to one page, ensure your columns are best after toggling to the Formulas view and before printing. To do this, double-click on the column heading, and when the cursor turns to a double-headed arrow (as shown), it best fits that column.

If the formulas are still rolling over to a second page and you don’t want them to, you can force them onto a single page in the Page Setup dialog box. On the Page Layout ribbon, in the Page Setup grouping, click the small arrow in the right-hand corner of that grouping to open the Page Setup dialog box. On the Page tab, in the Scaling area, choose the "Fit to" radio button (see figure on the right). The default is one page wide by one page tall (as shown). You can make changes here to fit the page better for printing. For example, you can change it to one page wide by two pages tall or whatever works best to print your document in Formula view. Open a spreadsheet, turn on the Formulas view, and try printing your spreadsheet to one page.

Figure 3

If you save the workbook now, it will stay in the Formulas view. Toggle back to the Normal view in order to reset the columns before saving the file if you want it to already be in Normal view the next time you open it.

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Source: Saylor Academy
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