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
    2014-09-05T17:36:21+00:00

    This is very helpful!! Thank you so much!

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-07-16T17:21:25+00:00

    Thank  you! Thank you! I was actually crying as I work on my thesis because I could not make those blank pages go away. Why why why would such a glitch get by the MS programmers? But then again, I use Word for my professional editing work and I and a group of editors I meet with regularly are keeping a list to someday sent to Microsoft about all the lame ways that program works. Peter Principle, no doubt. Anyway you just lowered my stress levels tremendously, and I can get back to thesis writing!

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-04-17T06:39:43+00:00

    Bless you.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-04-03T19:54:31+00:00

    I tried the steps listed by Jeeped but the instructions were causing the whole sheet to be highlighted and in turn deleting everything. I did not create the spreadsheet in question so it could be protected or locked in some way that I am not aware of. But my solution to this problem was to simply set the print area. Just highlighted the area I wanted to print and clicked "set print area". The sheet then printed on only one page.

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