Tech Tip of the Week

Printing the page number correctly in landscape layout in Microsoft Excel

Generally, when we are working on a report and the pages to be printed are set up in portrait layout and if one of the pages is in landscape layout, the page number that should be at the bottom of the page gets printed on the right side.

To avoid this, print the page number from a cell in the sheet, not in the footer.

Select Column A, right click, and from the shortcut menu, select Insert. In Cell A1, type the page number, select the range A1:A29. Press Ctrl+1 (Format Cells), select the Alignment tab. In Text Alignment, Horizontal, select Left (in Excel 97, select Right). In Text Alignment, Vertical, select Center. In Text Control, select Merge cells. In Orientation, change the text orientation to -90 degrees (if the sheet direction is right to left, text orientation should be 90 degrees). Click OK.

Update the print area—from the File menu, select Page Setup. Select the sheet tab. In Print Area, change B1 to A1. The new print area is A1:N29 (the print area includes the new column). Select the Margins tab. Reduce the right margin to 0 (so that the page number will appear at the bottom of the printed page). Select the Header/Footer tab. Select Custom footer. Delete Page (if it appears in one of the sections). Click OK.

The result—the page number entered is displayed horizontally and centred in Column A.