unwanted extra blank pages in Excel 2010

Anonymous
2013-01-13T17:34:03+00:00

Sometimes, when I'm working in an Excel 2010 document, I'll click File | Print just to see the preview of what the document will look like (in terms of its division into pages) when it's printed.

Usually everything is as expected, but occasionally Excel will arbitrarily decide that my document has many extra blank pages at the end of it.

No amount of removing page breaks or deleting rows at the end of the document (or relaunching Excel or rebooting the computer) will correct this.  If I save the document as a .pdf file, the problem persists in the .pdf file.

Can anyone tell me what's going on and how to fix this?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2013-01-13T17:45:10+00:00

It would appear you've run into the infamousLast Cell property of Excel. To verify the cell that Excel believes is the last relevant cell, you can use Ctrl+End. This will take you to the cell that Excel believes to the the outer extent of information. The cell may not contain any information but the row and/or column it is on either has information or had information at some point.

To reset theLastCell of a worksheet, select a cell that is one down and one right to the one you want to be the absolute extents of your worksheet (e.g. all the way down and right). For example, if you want Z99 as the newLast Cell, select AA100. Next, walk through these steps to completely remove extraneous information,

  1. PressCTRL+Shift+<right arrow>. Release and pressCTRL+<spacebar>. Release and pressALT+E then D or right click the highlighted columns and selectDelete.
  2. PressHome, then pressCTRL+Shift+<down arrow>. Release and pressShift+<spacebar>. Release and pressALT+E thenD or right click the highlighted rows and selectDelete.
  3. PressCTRL+Home to return to A1. ImmediatelySave or (if you don't trust your keystrokes)Save As to confirm the new Last Cell position.
  4. PressCTRL+End and you should be in theLast_Cell (e.g. Z99).

It might seem like a lot, but it takes a lot more time to type it out here than it does to actually do it.

Due diligence: There is the potential here to delete a lot of possibly relevant data and/or formulas. Make sure you have a backup copy!

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-02-23T04:18:23+00:00

    Hi,  I did all these steps but it did not delete the extra pages.  When I use the Print Preview feature.  It shows all the extra pages 20, 21, etc. etc.  I don't even know how many pages are there.

    Thanks for all your help1

    @lpacguad;

    If you have additional (non-standard) cell or number formatting in the last row, you will need to use the Home tab's Editing, Clear Formats or Editing, Clear All as well. This should be done immediately after deleting the rows and/or columns. Something like,

    1. Select entire rows from bottom of data to bottom of worksheet.
    2. Delete
    3. Clear Formats
    4. Select entire columns from right of data to extreme right of worksheet
    5. Delete
    6. Clear formats
    7. Save worksheet

    That should get you the results you are looking for.

    Edit: added image on where to find Clear Formats

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-01-13T18:58:54+00:00

    ... If you have any insight into what I just described, I'd love to hear it.  Thanks again.

    The only thing that comes to mind would be two cells merged across the last column and the unused one to the right. This would actually explain the extra pages as any Excel Print Area must be rectangular in shape and the merged cells would force printing an empty page with the extra column for every page in the original Print Area definition. Hope that is clear to you as it is only as clear as mud to me.

    I'm glad to hear this got cleared up. Thanks for the feedback and the kind words.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-09-28T18:24:38+00:00

    I tried the steps in the message directly following your question.  It didn't work for me, but for others maybe this will work..

    So my worksheet had a footer with page numbers # of #.  It was showing that I had 17 pages but I only had 10 pages stemming from A1 to down to A291 with adjusted columns so that my pages all went downwards and not side by side. What I noticed was that my  column D (last column of the page) had a number too large (this was on page 7 of "10") and spilt into column E which was on the page to the right which was what I didn't want.  That was what made my print preview show 17 pages (the original 10 vertical pages and then another column of pages up to where that number spilt over).  Shrinking columns A, B, and C and widening D still did nothing.  So what I did was I shrunk column E so that it could fit onto the page with A, B, C, and D.  That solved the problem:)

    I don't know if that's other people's issues but if the first reply to this original question doesnt work for you then maybe this was the issue.  Put your View mode into "Page Layout" and you'll be able to see it much more clearly if there are in fact any spills that are into another column that are forcing another column of pages.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-01-13T18:44:17+00:00

    The mystery deepens, but strangely, the problem is solved.

    I noticed that when I attempted to select the last column of the range of cells, as I scrolled down through the document, the selection process proceeded as you would expect, but when I got to the end of the third to last page, suddenly the column to the right of the real last column was also being selected.

    So I deleted that column.  Magically, it fixed the problem!!

    I suspect that this is a glitch in Excel 2010.  For a program as huge and complex as this one, I suppose it's not surprising.

    But thanks very much for your help.  I'll give you a "Found this helpful".

    If you have any insight into what I just described, I'd love to hear it.  Thanks again.

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