Forum Discussion
Excel page break not working
- Nov 01, 2021
On the Page Layout tab of the ribbon, click the little arrow in the lower right corner of the Page Setup group.
In the Page tab of the Page Setup dialog, check whether the sheet has been set up to fit into 1 page wide by 1 page tall.
In the Sheet tab of this dialog, check whether a print area has been specified.
You'll have to set Height to Automatic instead of 2 pages. The manually inserted page break below row 38 should then work.
HansVogelaar Under Page Setup/Page/Scaling, there isn't an option for 'Automatic' as it just gives me a dropdown box to insert figures for both 'width' and 'tall'.
This may be because I'm using the Mac version but am having exactly the same issue as Stuart.
Any ideas?
- Riny_van_EekelenAug 23, 2022Platinum Contributor
RCully I suspect that you are looking under File, Page Setup. There you will indeed not find the "Automatic" option. But, 100% sizing is the same as automatic.
But, look on the Page Layout ribbon. There you should see the Automatic options for Height and Width in the Scale to Fit group.
If not, please state your Excel version. Can't really remember if this is something that existed in older versions of Excel for Mac.
- RCullyAug 24, 2022Copper Contributor
Riny_van_Eekelen Thanks for your perseverance!
On the Page Layout ribbon, automatic is definitely shown for both instances - but the problem persists. However, after going to Page Setup/Page/Scaling and reducing (after hit and miss) to 45%, the page breaks where I want it to break whilst keeping just one page wide. With this Scaling at 100%, and Automatic showing, it is back to trying to print 8 pages (instead of one wide and two high).
I'm on Version 16.64 Excel which is part of the Microsoft suite for Mac.
As someone else said, this should be made easier....... Roy
- Riny_van_EekelenAug 24, 2022Platinum Contributor
RCully But your initial post was that you didn't have the "Automatic" setting. Now you mention that Excel doesn't automatically print 1 high by 2 wide. Well, isn't that obvious?
Played around a little with page setup and it seems that "Automatic" scaling sets the pages to max 640 pixels wide and max 960 pixels high. Leaving it to Automatic will, in your case, print 8 by 8. If that's not what you want you need to override the Automatic setting and explicitly tell Excel to print 1 wide by 2 high. And when you have done that, you will notice that the scaling percentage will have automatically been set to whatever scaling achieves that. No need to do that by trial and error.