Weekly Computer Tip # 148
24 March 2006

print a specific row or column as your title on every page of a printed worksheet (Microsoft Excel)

Last Friday I did a one-to-one training session at one of the local Colleges. As is often the case during these type of meetings I became the "PC agony aunt", with colleagues coming along with their questions. (Love it!) A lot of these questions I've often covered in these weekly tips and one of them I could have sworn I tackled before. But when I tried to find it on http://www.roem.co.uk/hints.html (ok, ok, the list is getting a bit long but the search engine works!) it turned out I hadn't. So this week's tip is inspired by Caroline, who asked how, in Excel, you can automatically print column headings on each page.

So picture this ... your worksheet is too big to fit on one page. (After all, you can have 256 columns and 65536 rows!) You may have noticed that the column headings appear only on the first page. Manually repeating the headings is not a good idea as adding extra rows will simply push the heading further down the second page. Yet if you don't add the headings the printout can be rather confusing, as they are there to clarify the data. So save everyone the trouble of flipping back to the first page of your printout and add row or column headings.

Here's how:

1. Select the File, Page Setup command.
2. Click the Sheet tab, if necessary.
3. Under "Print titles" click in the "Rows to repeat at top" box.
4. With the Page Setup dialog box open, click on any of the cells in the specific row(s) you want to repeat as your horizontal title for each page.
5. Click OK.

This procedure works for columns too. Simply select "Columns to repeat at left" if you want vertical titles on each page and select any of the cells in the column(s) you want to repeat.

By the way, you cannot do this if you accessed the Page Setup dialog box from within Print Preview.

Finally, a quick reminder that you only have 5.5 working days left to benefit from a 65 pounds discount off the next Excel with Excel seminar. For more information and a booking form see http://www.roem.co.uk/handsoff_excel110506.html. (It's now even easier to book as credit and debit card payments are accepted online!)

Until next week.

PS I’m committed to sharing the best of what I know with others so please don’t keep me a secret. If you enjoyed today’s tip, please forward it to anyone you feel may benefit. Alternatively, feel free to reprint it (with full copyright and subscription information) in your newsletters and message boards.

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