User profile for user: Neil Paisnel
Neil Paisnel Author
User level: Level 1
52 points

Print selection of a sheet

How is this done?

I want to highlight a portion of a sheet and print just that bit.

There is nothing in the help about this and have tried all the menu options, and cant see anything that does the job.

If what I mean is not clear, i shall try to explain.
In MS Office Excel, I can highlight a selection of cells, and when I ask to print I can select a box that allow just the selected area to be printed.

Can this be achieved in Numbers?

Neil

Mac Pro 3.0Ghz 10Gb RAM 4 x 1Tb HD's, Mac OS X (10.5.6), FreeNAS servers and Other Windoze and Linux machines

Posted on May 25, 2009 2:53 AM

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9 replies
User profile for user: Brie Fly
Brie Fly
User level: Level 5
7,925 points

May 25, 2009 9:27 AM in response to Neil Paisnel

Can this be achieved in Numbers?



Not directly, but easily enough.

Select the block of cells you wish to print. Press control+C to copy the selection to the clipboard. Scroll to an empty portion of the Numbers window and press control+V to paste the selected cells onto the canvas. Press control+P to print the table (then delete it if it is of no further use).
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User profile for user: Badunit
Badunit
User level: Level 7
30,456 points

May 25, 2009 8:07 PM in response to Jerrold Green1

Judging by Neil's posts in the other forums, he seems to have a lot of problems with his Mac and other Apple equipment; things just don't seem to work the same on his Mac as they do on everyone else's. After one day of posting Numbers questions here (3 threads in total), he's through with Numbers 09. If someone doesn't want to take the time to learn a new application, that is their prerogative I suppose.
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User profile for user: Neil Paisnel
Neil Paisnel Author
User level: Level 1
52 points

May 26, 2009 12:39 AM in response to Badunit

Oh , I do want to learn. if I did, I would not be spending 12 hrs a day on it every day I have off from work. I work split /half day work shifts, the non working parts of the day are spent on this Mac.
Some days from 7 in the morning till 9 or 10 at night. I have had this machine since beginning of April

I have piles of book, manuals magazines, print outs of help files all over the place. I only post once I have searched etc first. My partner, she is getting very jealous of this machine. I promised this orning that I would not go on the machine, we need a tow hitch for the car, so I promised I would go to the workshop first thing this morning and start welding up a new one. Already I have been here an hour.

But back to this print question.

I have tried to copy and paste a selection to somewhere else, but the only way I can find to get just a selection to print is by creating a new sheet and pasting to that, or using Print view, dragging to a different page and printing just that page. Not particularly convenient. I was hoping to find a easy way to just select and print. Help seems to say nothing about this. Well not using the term 'Selection and Print anyway


But maybe I should have posted this in a more general section, as it is more of an OS issue rather than a Numbers specific issue.
I was wondering if it is possibly a printer type or Gutenprint issue, although I do not believe this is the case as I can print a selection of text from Open Office or MS Word/Excel on Ubuntu /Windows machine. I am printing to a network printer, via Gutenprint, as this was the only solution to get the printer working with the Mac, so i did at first wonder if that was the issue here.

Yes, I am having lots of problems with the Mac, far more than I expected, certainly far more than I experienced, when moving over to Ubuntu linux from Windows a few years back. The girlfriend like to stick with what she knows, so we have one machine that is Windows, she finds Mac too confusing, although she is slowly getting used to it.

Yes, three posts, three separate questions. maybe i should have lumped them all into one? I always like to keep separate issues separate. Maybe I am wrong in that.

I have mates with Macs, and they have been here, and they are unable to fix some of the other issues I have with it...but they are not bothered. There attitude is 'cant be done, why bother trying that is how Apple has made it'. That does seem to be the general attitude amongst many users, (Windows or Mac), if something does not work, they just accept it . Well I do not like to give up that easily

Just because many Mac users have no problems, or can live with the way it is done, they get very defensive about the OS rather than try and help. It is still oly a computer for £££@ sake and it has faults and bugs like any other OS. If it was, then there would not need to be forums like this or any of the other forums for....(Mac/Ubuntu/RedHat/Insert your own fav OS) on the internet.

Why bother to add a reply to a thread if it is of no help, just to 'do down' the original poster. I do find that attitude far more prevalent on Mac forums I am afraid.

There
I have had my moan, thanks Yvan for your help on this one

Neil
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User profile for user: Badunit
Badunit
User level: Level 7
30,456 points

May 26, 2009 6:28 AM in response to Neil Paisnel

The easiest way to quickly do what you want is what you have already discovered: create a new sheet, paste to it, print it, then delete it. However, if you are always printing the same range of cells, the better way may be to create a new sheet with a table that duplicates the cells you want to print (i.e., each cell has a formula like "=Sheet 1::Table 1::A1") and formatted as you would like it printed.

This is one of those learning things about the difference between Excel and Numbers. Excel creates monolithic spreadsheets and requires that you select the cells you want printed from that monolithic spreadsheet. Numbers is designed for page layout. You create a page with the stuff you want to print. It may be your entire spreadsheet or it may be a table and a chart that pull data from another table on another sheet (which is not printed). It is simply a different way of thinking, for better or worse.
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User profile for user: KOENIG Yvan
KOENIG Yvan
User level: Level 8
41,819 points

May 26, 2009 6:32 AM in response to Neil Paisnel

Neil Paisnel wrote:
I have tried to copy and paste a selection to somewhere else, but the only way I can find to get just a selection to print is by creating a new sheet and pasting to that, or using Print view, dragging to a different page and printing just that page. Not particularly convenient. I was hoping to find a easy way to just select and print. Help seems to say nothing about this. Well not using the term 'Selection and Print anyway


From my point of view, the easy soluceis:

duplicate the table
select all the copy's contents
copy to clipboard
Paste values only
Then we are able to remove rows/columns which you don't want to print.
Print the resulting table.

No need to move it in an other document or an other sheet, just print the page(s) containing the table.

I don't know if modern applications offer the print selection feature. As far as I know, OpenOffice for Mac doesn't.
An old application like AppleWorks offer a slightly different function: it doesn't print the selection but we may define the range of cells to print.

I assume that may be coded in AppleWorks may be coded also in other applications. Just a problem of choice when defining what must be offered and what must not.
And this problem of choice is often more complex than the true coding of functions.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE mardi 26 mai 2009 15:32:48)
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Print selection of a sheet

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