Printing Wide Spreadsheets and Databases

A spreadsheet or database with lots of columns will be too wide to print across the width of a single sheet of paper. How should you handle your print-outs?

• If your document is just slightly too wide for the usual "portrait" orientation (long edge of the paper vertical), you can print it in "landscape" orientation (long edge of the paper horizontal).

• If your data won't fit into one width of paper even using landscape orientation, then accept that fact and deal with it intelligently. For example, suppose your spreadsheet or database has 10 columns and 30 rows. It may print on 2 sheets of paper with, perhaps, columns A through F on the first sheet and columns G through J on the second sheet. Now, you want cell F1 to be next to cell G1, but they're on different sheets of paper. Tape the sheets together with cell F1 next to cell G1, cell F2 next to cell G2, etc. You may then fold the document along the tape in order to shape it into convenient dimensions, suitable for carrying in a folder, envelope, briefcase, or picture-frame.

• Incidentally, this explains the origin of the term "spreadsheet" -- a document that, typically, must be spread out in order to be read.

Now, if you're submitting such a document with other pages as part of a homework assignment, don't staple your pages in such a way that I have to rip them apart in order to read them. Rather, staple the top left corner of your taped spreadsheet/database document to the top left corner of the pages of other documents that make up your submission, and fold as needed.