Microsoft Office

Part I
Getting Started with Excel
Preventing Certain Cells from Being Printed
If your worksheet contains confidential information, you may want to print the worksheet but not the confidential
parts. You can use several techniques to prevent certain parts of a worksheet from printing:
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When you hide rows or columns, the hidden rows aren’t printed. Use the Home ➪ Cells ➪
Format drop-down list to hide the selected rows or columns.
You can hide cells or ranges by making the text color the same color as the background color. Be
aware, however, that this method may not work for all printers.
You can hide cells by using a custom number format that consists of three semicolons (;;;). See
Chapter 24 for more information about using custom number formats.
You can mask off a confidential area of a worksheet by covering it with a rectangle Shape. Choose
Insert ➪ Illustrations ➪ Shapes and click the Rectangle Shape. You’ll probably want to adjust the
fill color to match the cell background and remove the border.
If you find that you must regularly hide data before you print certain reports, consider using the Custom
Views feature, discussed later in this chapter (see “Creating Custom View of Your Worksheet”). This feature
allows you to create a named view that doesn’t show the confidential information.
Preventing Objects from being Printed
To prevent objects on the worksheet (such as charts, Shapes, and SmartArt) from being printed, you need to
access the Size And Properties dialog box for the object (see Figure 10.9):
1. Right-click the object and select Size And Properties from the shortcut menu. Excel displays
the Size And Properties dialog box.
2. In the Size And Properties dialog box, select the Properties tab.
3. Remove the check mark from the check box labeled Print Object.
The shortcut menu that appears when you right-click a chart does not display the Size And
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Properties menu item. To access the Size And Properties dialog box for a chart, click the dialog
box launcher in the Chart Tools ➪ Format ➪ Size group.
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