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We wrote this FAQ to answer the many questions we receive on this topic from our clients and other inquiring minds in the many electronic communities we frequent.

This FAQ is taken from Excel 97 Annoyances (by Woody Leonhard, Lee Hudspeth, and T.J. Lee; ISBN 1-56592-309-X; O'Reilly and Associates). For additional information on this title, visit our site's page http://www.primeconsulting.com/eabook.shtml.

Click here to order Excel 97 Annoyances from Amazon.

(Annoyances, Excel 97) Print Trick with Range Names

Q: I want to print several different ranges at once, and they're all on one sheet. How do I do this?

A: You can use Excel's affinity for range names to print several ranges from a single worksheet.

1. Give a unique range name to each range in the sheet to be printed. Assume the range names Lobster, MainReport, and Godzilla for this example.
2. Create a range with the name Print_Area (Insert / Name / Define).
3. In the Refers to edit box for Print_Area enter the following formula (assume Sheet2 is the sheet name):

Your ranges will print out in one of two ways depending on how you define the range Print_Area in Step 3. We stumbled on this rather annoying inconsistency in our labs while testing this technique. If you define Print_Area by typing in the information in Step 3, and clicking the OK button in the Define Name dialog box, each range will start on a separate page. If instead you click the Add button, then the Close button, the ranges do not start on separate pages.

For example, if you have defined A1 as Lobster, B3 as MainReport, and C5 as Godzilla, clicking OK generates 3 separate pages (one range per page), but Add / Close prints all three ranges on a single page.

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