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
    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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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-18T04:34:27+00:00

    CTRL + END worked for me.

    Thank You

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-07-07T16:52:14+00:00

    This was a REALLY easy fix.  I noticed that the cells under my last "wanted" cell were larger than the norm.  I highlighted the rows directly underneath that had the rogue sizes and deleted them.  Solved the problem and now I have the one-pager of my dreams.  Good luck.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-05-22T06:48:44+00:00

    Point #1 amazingly helped me out.

    Thank you...

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