Print Titles in Excel

Although we live in a digital world, there is no replacement for printed hard copies. When you press the Print button in Excel, the entire worksheet gets printed by default, which often ends up printing multiple pages. The problem with multiple-page printing is that the title (or the headers) only appears on the first printed page and not others. It becomes difficult for the users to read the data without the headers, every time they have to turn the page back to checking the headings. Luckily, Excel provides the features to publish titles on every printed page easily.

This tutorial will cover step-by-step instructions using the print option in the "Page Layout" tab, which will help us to print the titles of every page in the worksheet.

How to Print Titles in Excel?

If you want to print an Excel sheet that will end up having multiple printed pages, for that Excel provides an option to set the sheet's headings or titles on every page.

By default, Excel provides headings for columns (in alphabetic order A, B, C) and rows (in numeric order1, 2, 3). You can specify the titles in your sheet that justify the content in your rows and columns. In the below given images, for example, we have marked the different angles describing the row heading, column heading, column titles and row titles.

1. Row headings
2. Column headings
3. Column titles
4. Row titles

Print row titles on every page

As you can see from the following illustration, we are given a huge Excel worksheet.

If you want to print this sheet on paper, certainly it will be printed to multiple pages. To apply row or column headers on all the printed sheets follow the below given steps:

1. Press the print shortcut key i.e, "Ctrl + P,"
2. The print dialog window will appear. Go to "Settings," from the Orientation window select the "Landscape Orientation" option. Next, select "Fit All Columns on One Page". It will help you to accommodate all the column in one printed page.
   
3. After the above step all the columns are fitted on a single Excel worksheet.
   
4. The next step is to repeat the heading on all the worksheets. From the Excel ribbon pane, go to "Page Layout" option, under the page set up option, click on "Print Titles".
   
5. The Print Titles window tab will appear. Now, we need to do alter the settings under this window. First, the tab selects the print area in Excel.
   
6. Under "Print titles" in Excel, look for the option called "Rows to repeat at top." Here, we must select the cell reference of our headers, i.e., the first row. So we will mention $1:$1
   
7. Click on the "OK" button. Since we have aligned the top row in all worksheets. Now, go to File and click on the "Print" and from the print preview check the orientation. The following print preview is the first worksheet. From a total of 6 excel worksheet, it has been reduced to 5 sheets now.

Now, if you notice, the second preview sheet also includes row headers. Hence now in the printed documents we will have the row heading across all the pages.

The above steps only included the row headers. What if we want to have a column heading in all the printed documents? To your surprise, it is also possible, and the steps for printing the column titles are almost similar to having row headers across pages. We need to select the column to repeat.

Print Column titles on every page

Following are the steps to print column headers on each printing page:

1. Press the print shortcut key i.e, "Ctrl + P,"
2. The next step is to repeat the column headings on all the worksheets. From the Excel ribbon pane, go to "Page Layout" option and select "Print Titles".
3. Now, we need to do alter the settings under this window. First, the tab selects the print area in Excel.
   
4. Under "Print titles" in Excel, you will find the option called "Columns to repeat at top." Here, we must enter the cell address of our column headings, i.e., the first column. So we will write $A:$A.
   
5. Click on the "OK" button. Since we have aligned the top row in all worksheets. Now, go to File and click on the "Print" and from the print preview check the orientation. The below preview is the first sheet. From a total of 6 excel worksheets, it has been reduced to 5 now.

In the print preview section, move to the second preview sheet and you will notice it also includes column headers. Following the above steps, we can easily have column heading across all printing documents.

Print row numbers and column alphabets

Now, we have covered the steps to print titles (both row and column) across all the printing sheets. But sometimes, we are also required to print the row numbers and column alphabets along with the header. What to do in such cases?

Tampering some Excel setting can let you print you Excel row numbers and column headers. Below given are the steps to achieve the same in Excel:

1. Click on the sheet.
2. From Excel ribbon, go to the Page Layout tab-> in the Sheet Options group, check the Print box under the Headings. Refer to the below image:
   
3. Now, press the "Ctrl + P" and select the print preview option to view the row numbers and column alphabets.

As shown in the following image, you can see how your sheet will print in the preview pane.

Now, we will be having the row numbers, column alphabets along with the row headers and column headers.

Things to Remember

We have covered the various ways to print the titles of every page in the worksheet. But sometimes, that is not sufficient, and we must set everything intact to have a flawless output. Below given are some pointers that must check before hitting the print button:

1. Make sure to set the print sheet in such an order that it can accommodate all columns in one sheet so you can have all the columns on one page.
2. We select the entire row to be repeated in all the sheets. We need to select only the data range. The same thing is applicable for columns too.
3. By default, we can view Excel row and column headers. However, if you want to print them as well, we can include them as a print by altering the setting (refer to the above section).
4. Printing titles saves time when we are planning to print multiple worksheets together.

That's all about Print Titles in this tutorial. Before printing, always make sure to freeze the rows headers and column headers, as it will increase the readability of your printed document.