When printing multiple tabs, Excel resets each to default Print Preferences

Question

I see several people have asked about this in other posts, but don't see any solution for the settings that are controlled via the Print Driver. This seems like a bug in Excel where every tab is a separate print job, instead of multiple pages in a single print job, but maybe I'm missing something (and in using Excel for decades, I must have printed multiple pages in the past without experiencing this, so maybe it's a recent bug that's been introduced via a recent Excel update?). I have 12 tabs (one for each month in this case). I want to print each from our main printer, using print tray #3, and in color, neither of which are defaults for the printer. I can't select those in Excel's Print options, but must select them by using the "Printer Properties" option in Excel:

The default print settings use the "Draft on Scrap" shortcut, which has a Paper source of Tray 1 and B&W instead of color.

I can print any individual page just fine: hit Ctrl+P (or File -> Print), select the printer from the drop-down, hit Printer Properties, specify the paper source and color as shown in the screenshot above, and it works. No problem.

However, if I select the multiple tabs I need to print and do that, the changes I made unter Printer Properties only apply to the first tab. The other tabs all ignore my changes and use the default printer preferences for that printer (tray #1 and B&W instead of tray #3 and color). They do print to the same printer, but using the default paper source and color instead of what I specified.

Like I said above, it seems that Excel treats every tab as a separate print job and so each is sent independently to printer with its own preferences.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with the HP printer drivers, as I can reproduce the same behavior with any printer, even software-based PostScript drivers that just print to PDF files. The issue is with Excel and its handling each tab as a separate Print Job if I change the printer properties (interestingly, it will send them all as 1 print job if no changes are made to the printing properties).

I can "force" it to work by going to each page in the preview, hitting Printer Properties, selecting the paper source and color, then hitting the next page button in the preview and repeating for every single page, and only then hitting Print, but this seems crazy. Surely there's a way to specify printing preferences for all pages or the entire document at once, no?

I know you can go to Page Layout and make changes in Page Setup (per screen shot below) and this will apply to multiple tabs if selected at the time, but as far as I can tell, there's no way to change the printer settings through this, just what Excel sends to the printer.

If there is a way to do this, how do I do it? In searching the Internet, I see several people have posted this same question but there are no answers that directly addressed the problem (the classic problem of people responding with some generic answer without actually reading the problem description).

I suppose I could probably print to a PDF first, so all the tabs end up in a single PDF file. Then, I could print the PDF specifying the proper print settings for entire job, but that kind of hacky work-around should obviously not be needed (surely we don't need to print to PDF just to print in color on non-scrap paper from Excel when printing multiple tabs).

Answer 1

You need to install full feature software from HP & follow the setup process.

Then in excel if needed set the print area, then in excel its File > Print, which shows the preview and allows you to set specific print options for that doc, before File > Print.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/hp-color-laserjet-cp5520-printer-series/model/4072928

I use Excel on a daily basis with multiple tabs in a bool

If win 11 see;

Win11 by default only installs critical security updates, unless you made the mistake of selecting “Get latest updates” which includes drivers.

See your laptop/PC makers support to update both bios and ALL drivers.

There should be a shortcut to that makers update utility on your system.

Then set Bios to defaults & Pwr to balanced. At the end of the day shutdown, do not leave in sleep.

Do NOT update from any other source inc Device Manager

Answer 2

If I print multiple pages in Word or slides in PowerPoint, they apply my print selections to all the pages in that print. Excel does not. Excel is broken.

This is simply a false statement and clearly shows your lack of technical knowledge of how things work on your computer.

In Word, try printing the first page in color and the 2nd and 3rd in black/white and then in color again. This is not possible, but Excel can do this via worksheets. And Excel has a lot more of possibilities to present data and analyses as all other office applications.

Furthermore, there are many variations of printers, some are very simple, some are multifunction devices with which I can print double-sided, do various hole punches and even staple the pages at the end!

We do not collect or report bugs here. This is an answers forum, we help users to achieve there concerns. Your issue cannot be resolved because the settings cannot be found within Excel. I'm sorry, but these are the facts.

I you want to report a bug or make a suggestion, please use the feedback function in your application:
How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office? - Office Support

Andreas.

Answer 3

@Palcouk, yes, I do have the latest HP printer drivers are installed. I wouldn't have posted the question if I thought I just needed to update something. Print area and page layout have nothing to do with the issue. Those are layout issues. The ONLY issue here is that when printing multiple tabs AND changing Printer Properties as shown in the first of the two screen shots in my original post (not talking about Excel printing options) only the first tab uses those Printer Properties changes. All the other tabs use the default printer preferences.

If in the preview, you change the preferences for another tab, it prints as a separate print job and will also maintain those changes. But to apply those changes (like printing in color vs. B&W or selecting which paper tray to use) to all tabs, you have to do it manually for every single tab. Where you would expect changing the Printer Properties in Excel's Print dialog would apply to everything you're printing, IT ONLY APPLIES TO THE FIRST TAB (or other individually modified pages). Clearly that's not right.

As proof this has nothing to do with the printer drivers, I get the same problem when printing to PDF using an open source PostScript PDF print driver if I specify print driver options. The first tab uses the modified print options, ALL OTHER TABS USE THE DEFAULTS.

Further, here's a screen capture of the Print Queue, showing that Excel is sending multiple print jobs. If there's not a way to prevent this from happening, then this is a bug. I can't imagine anyone would want to have to specify the same print options for every single page when printing a page per tab like this. This is all from one document and a single print command, note the multiple print jobs from a single Print command:

Answer 4

The problem is that this settings are not inside Excel:

If you change this settings from Excel, you change the setting in the printer driver, but only temporary!

If you want to use that settings all the time, you have to install the same printer again with a different name, so that you have two printer profiles and each can have different settings.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-can-i-install-the-same-printer-twice/dd22bdf3-2721-454a-81d8-568c017d10f0

Andreas.

Answer 5

@Andreas Killer, I agree that would work, but it's no more viable a solution than manually setting the print options for every single tab, which also works. If you look at that screen shot, you'll notice that on the left side, there are multiple printing "shortcuts." That is the way it's supposed to work in Windows when you print a document and want to have multiple standard print options. You can use the default, or select something different for that particular print job. All of those printer options with the two heads in the lower right of the icon are the ones created for users to choose when they need to print (the others are built-in), with printing on scrap paper being the default on this printer. Users can further customize each of them by selecting any value in the drop-downs on that page or on the other tabs before printing (including things like watermarks or scaling to fit multiple print pages on each sheet of paper).

In effect, what you're saying is that whenever a user needs to print multiple tabs in Excel and doesn't want the default printing preferences, that user (possibly lacking the local or network permissions to do so, by the way) needs to create a new printer with new printing preferences as its defaults, and then print to that new printer, or go to IT and ask to have a new printer added to the network just for his or her custom print need. While yes, that would work, that's clearly not a viable long-term solution (and security settings at many organizations would make this impossible for individual users trying to do this for themselves).

Unless we're all missing something and there is a way to do this with just a few steps from Excel, the problem is with Excel and unique to Excel: it treats each tab as a separate print job if (and only if) the user changes the printing properties. NO OTHER APP DOES THIS (and I swear, this is a newish problem in Excel and that it did not used to do this either -- while I can't be 100% certain, I just can't imagine that in all the years I've been using and printing from Excel, I've never needed to print multiple tabs using custom printing preferences before). If I print multiple pages in Word or slides in PowerPoint, they apply my print selections to all the pages in that print. The current version of Excel does not. It is broken.

The reason I retain some hope, is that I could see in a few rare cases, the ability to treat each tab as a separate print job could be useful, like printing the first page on letterhead and all the rest on standard paper, or only certain pages getting landscape orientation. Therefore, maybe this is just a setting in Excel with some simple checkbox for "Treat multiple tabs as a single print job" that I may have accidentally unchecked. I can't imagine any user would prefer what I'm experiencing as the only way to print, hence it being a bug if there's not an Excel-based solution.