Excel – How to print an Excel sheet in a multi-column layout

microsoft excel

In my excel sheet I have three columns A, B, C that are very thin, but have a lot of lines (>500). Now if I print this out, I get 10 pages that are almost empty. Only at the left border of each page I see this three columns.

What I want to do, is to print that whole sheet in a multicolumn layout. 2 or 3 columns per page would be enough. Currently, I'm doing it by copying the values out of Excel, inserting it into a Word document and then use the multi-column layout function of Word. Isn't there a way to achieve that directly in Excel?

To clarify my problem:
Currently my pages look like that

A B C
A B C
A B C
A B C
. . .

But what I want is this:

A B C     A B C     A B C
A B C     A B C     A B C
A B C     A B C     A B C
. . .     . . .     . . .

Best Answer

I don't think Excel can do that. A possible work-around is to use Microsoft Word and snake the columns around: How to snake columns to use fewer pages

Using MS Word to Snake Columns (#msword)

This is probably the easiest to use for a one time usage, since I've not put in a dialog into my Excel macro described later.

  1. Select and copy columns from Excel spreadsheet.
  2. Paste into Word, this takes a few moments
  3. Select the rows to be repeated at top in the table, then indicate this in Word with Table --> Rows to repeated
  4. Select entire table using anchor, or selecting cell(s) in the table and then Table --> Select --> Table
  5. Indicate number of rows using the columns button, or Format --> Columns if you want more control over placement

This example works well. The post offers other possibilities, too.