Don't Have MS Excel At Home Computer But Like To Print An Excel Report That Is Saved In Office Computer?

While taking print out you would have noticed an option called ‘Print to File’ in the Print dialogue box.

If ‘Print to File’ option is enabled, your computer will not send the printing information to Printer. It will convert the information into a file that can be read by any computer from DOS prompt.

Let us see how to create a print file. :-)

1. Open the workbook that you want to file (For example, the file name is ‘Sales’).
2. Select Print command from File menu.
3. Print dialogue box appears in your screen.
4. Select ‘Print to File’ option.
5. It prompts you a file name and file location.
6. The information like Text, Numbers with same Font, Font size, margins etc. are converted into a File.

You can find the generated file in the stored location. (This print file will have .prn extension).

Well, so far we have seen how to print a workbook into file. Now let us see how to get print out from the file.

1. Go to Start --> Run --> type "COMMAND" or "CMD" (without double quotes).
2. Go to the location where you stored the file.
3. Copy sales.prn lpt1 /b

copy sales.prn lpt1 /b

In the above syntax ‘Sales.prn’ is the file name. ‘Lpt1’ indicates your printer terminal and ‘/b’ indicates binary file.

This option helps you in many ways. Some of them are:

• This feature helps you to take print out of a workbook from any computer even if the computer is not installed with Microsoft Excel or MS Office applications.
• You need not worry about file size of a workbook. Whichever report you want, you can print it to a file and easily save it in your floppy or CD. Later you can take print out from another computer. This is because the file generated using ‘Print to File’ feature is so small in size.
• Once you saved a print file, you can able to print the worksheet without even starting excel program.
• Knowledge about this feature may help you while working on other applications.

(This feature is common for other applications. You can easily export the data from other applications and later import it into Excel).

• This saves your time, as you need not open your workbook every time and make necessary changes in Page Setup settings.

I hope you will make use of this feature in emergency situations where your computer is not connected to a Printer.