Understanding Microsoft Excel 2007′s Three Page View Modes
February 15, 2010 by Ben Jenkins
Filed under Online Trainings
Although Excel’s Print Preview feature is fairly useful, it is purely a preview mode. You are not able to work on your data while in Print Preview mode. However, in addition to Print Preview, Excel 2007 has two new modes of working which offer similar benefits to Print Preview while allowing you full access to your data. To switch to these modes, use the buttons on the right of the Excel status bar. There are buttons which can take you from Normal mode to Page Layout or to Page Break Preview.
Normal mode is the default mode in Excel. Here, the focus is on modifying and entering your data without thinking too much about pagination. If you print or preview your data, Excel paginates the worksheet and inserts dotted lines to show you the page breaks. This is normally the only feedback which relates to the printed version of your document.
By contrast, Page Layout view gives you a permanent preview of where page breaks will occur and which data will be printed on which pages. When in Page Layout view, zoom out so that you can see more of the worksheet and you’ll notice that Excel displays margins on the left, right, top and bottom, as well as headers and footers. However, the great thing is that Page Layout view not simply a preview mode. You still have access to all the data within your worksheet and you can edit each of the cells it contains. If the printed version of your worksheet is particularly important, you may find it convenient to stay in this mode permanently; particularly if you have the benefit of a large monitor.
Excel’s third page view is called Page Break Preview. You will notice that, when you click on the Page Break Preview button, Excel automatically zooms out so that you can see more of your worksheet. Page Break Preview mode is a lot like Normal mode. It isn’t WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) and neither headers and footers nor margins are displayed. The chief difference between Normal mode and Page Break Preview mode is that, in Page Break Preview mode, the margins can be dragged.
This can be an extremely useful facility. For example, if you want to force a given column of data onto a new page, you just drag the blue dotted line representing the page break to the left of that column. In fact, it can be a deceptively simple facility. Many experienced Excel 2003 users may even mistake the dotted lines representing page breaks for a variation of those which are displayed in Normal mode and may not even realise that they can in fact be dragged.
Author is a developer and trainer with TrainingCompany.Com, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft Excel 2007training courses in London and throughout the UK.