Printing from Microsoft Excel is a much different experience to printing from Word or PDF, and oftentimes your spreadsheet printouts can look messy and confusing if not formatted correctly. One of the best ways to ensure that your worksheet looks as good as it can (and more easily readable) when printed is to center it vertically.
To learn how to vertically center your worksheets in Excel, simply follow our step-by-step tutorials below. For any further information, or if you have any other queries, we recommend you check out our FAQ section at the bottom of this article.
Table of Contents
How to vertically center worksheets in Microsoft Excel
- Open up Microsoft Excel on your computer, and load a test document with some data entered into it (alternatively, open a new sheet and enter some random test data).
- Now, click the ‘Page Layout’ tab toward the top of the screen
- Next, find ‘Margins’ and click the drop-down arrow underneath it
- Once you’ve done that, hit ‘Custom Margins’ at the bottom of this drop-down menu
- And lastly, find ‘Center on page’, all you have to do is to look below this, and tick the box next to ‘Vertically’, then press ‘OK’ to confirm your formatting choice.
- Go back to your print preview and you will now see that your Microsoft Excel worksheet has been centered along the Y axis.
And that’s all there is to it! If you have any other questions, queries, or would like to learn a little bit more on the subject, why not check out our FAQs below.
FAQs
What does it mean to vertically center a Microsoft Excel worksheet?
You might think that when we talk about centering or reformatting a worksheet that it’s going to change the way your worksheet looks when you’re working on it, but this isn’t exactly true. In fact, centering a worksheet along either axis (X or Y) only affects the look of the worksheet when printed.
Microsoft Excel is used by millions of people around the world to create presentations, input crucial data, keep track of finances, and conduct important company evaluations. When printed out, however, it can look a little messy. So many numbers, so many different cells, and data sheets; it can all get quite clunky and confusing when printed in its default page setup.
Centering a worksheet vertically means centering the data which is to be printed along the Y-axis. In other words, when printed your data will be in the middle of the page, on the left-hand margin. A much neater, more professional look than the default setup.
Pairing a vertical centering with a horizontal one puts the data right smack-bang in the middle of the page, which can be even more useful. However you want to center it is up to you, but if you choose to center your worksheet vertically, we’ve got all the steps you need to take in order to do it.
Can I reformat my worksheet to the default settings if I change my mind?
Of course. If you decide that you actually don’t like the look of your worksheet once it’s been vertically (and/or horizontally) centered, you can quite easily reset the page layout to default without any great hassle. To do so, simply follow the steps above once more, but this time uncheck the box(es) next to ‘Vertically’ (and/or ‘Horizontally’). Then, lastly, click ‘OK’ to return your page layout to default.
Remember, centering your Excel worksheet vertically will not affect the mechanics of working with the program. It only affects the print layout.
