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Print pane in Office 2010

An overview of the Print options in the new Backstage view.

In Office 2010 the Print tab is moved to the File menu aka Backstage. Available Printer options, page settings and page preview have all been grouped together in one place and made more obvious.

The Print pane is much the same across all Office 2010 applications. To access the Print pane click on File | Print or use the standard keyboard shortcut Ctrl + P.

Print pane.jpg image from Print pane in Office 2010 at Office-Watch.com

Right at top of the pane you can specify the number of copies you want to print of the document. If the Printer is setup and you have made all the necessary page settings then you can click on the Print button to get your copy. If you hover the mouse over the little “i” symbol in circle then you will get a more detailed status message of your printer setup.

An image of the pages to be printed will appear on the right side of the print pane. The pages can be zoomed in or out to adjust the appearance. You can click on either File or Home tab or press escape to go back to the document to make any changes before printing.

The image on right of the Print pane is NOT a print preview. As you change options like ‘Pages per sheet’ the image doesn’t change.


Printer

Based on the printers configured the printer details will be displayed under Printer link. You can choose the desired printer.

Printer pane.jpg image from Print pane in Office 2010 at Office-Watch.com

If you want to add a printer, then click on Add Printer link.


Printer Settings

To change the document settings of the printer you choose to print the files click on Printer Properties link. In the settings window you can modify the orientation of page i.e. choose between Portrait and Landscape, choose page order and page format. Borders will be automatically drawn if you select to print more than one sheet in a page. However, you can uncheck this option if you do not want border between different sheets. Under Paper/Quality tab you can choose to print Color or Black & White copy.

Click on Advanced button to modify advanced printer properties.


Print Settings

You can select the number of pages you want to print in your document under Settings. You have number of options to print the pages. Apart from printing all the pages you can print only odd or even numbered pages. You can select a section of the content and then print only the selected content. But this selection will not be highlighted in the Preview of the page which appears in the Print pane. Even Markups in the page can be printed.

Print pages.jpg image from Print pane in Office 2010 at Office-Watch.com

You can mention page numbers or page sections in the text box to print only specific pages.

Almost any range of pages can be printed with commas separating the pages requested and hyphens indicating a range of pages to print:



  • 3-7 will print pages from 3 to 7 inclusive

  • 1,3,5,7 will print only pages 1, 3, 5 and 7 of the document.

  • 3, 7-11, 13 prints page 3, then 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 plus page 13.

You don’t have to know the exact ending page number, any number higher than the total pages in the document will make all the pages until the end print out. Or you can just put a dash with nothing either before or afterwards. For example, in a 73 page document a page range of 50- will print all the pages from 50 to the end or 50-99 will also work. Similarly -50 will print from the start to page 50.

You can print whole sections of a document if you have inserted section breaks, naturally.



  • s7 will print only section 7

  • s5-s7 will print from section 5 to section 7 inclusive

  • s5p4-s5p7 prints section 5 pages 4 to 7 inclusive

  • s5p4-s6p8 prints from section 5 page 4 to section 6 page 8

Based on the printer options you can print on one or both sides of a page. Some printers do not support duplex printing. You can make that out by looking at the settings option.


Pages per sheet

A paper saving option is to print more than one page on a single sheet of paper.

Office 2010 - Print Pages per sheet.jpg image from Print pane in Office 2010 at Office-Watch.com

The ‘2 pages per sheet’ option is good for drafts of documents. Options of 4 pages per sheet and higher are often too small to read but can help you see the overall layout of a document.

The option does not change the document itself.


Scale to Paper Size

Scale to Paper Size also makes no change to a document, it only adjusts the page image to fit the paper page. Most commonly it’s used to adjust between imperial/US and metric paper sizes.

Office 2010 - Print Scale to Paper Size.jpg image from Print pane in Office 2010 at Office-Watch.com


Page Setup

You can customize page settings like page orientation, page size, set margin and select number of pages to print per sheet.

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