Excel VBA print preview selected range

Michelle has a lengthy worksheet that she's working with. When she uses Print Preview for the worksheet, the page shown in the Print Preview dialog is always the first page. Michelle wonders if there is a way to make Print Preview automatically show the page of the worksheet on which she's working.

One way to approach this problem is to try working with print areas. If you select the area of the worksheet on which you are working and then set the print area equal to your selection, then when you display Print Preview, you should see only that print area.

If this does not accomplish your desire, then you might think you can resort to using a macro. Here's an example macro that may do the trick for you:

Sub PrintPreviewActivePage() Dim lActiveRow As Long Dim iActiveCol As Integer Dim iHPBs As Integer Dim iVPBs As Integer Dim lRow As Integer Dim iCol As Integer Dim iPage As Integer lActiveRow = ActiveCell.Row iActiveCol = ActiveCell.Column ActiveSheet.UsedRange If IsEmpty(ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell)) Then _ ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).FormulaR1C1 = " " If lActiveRow > ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Row Or _ iActiveCol > ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Column Then _ Exit Sub With ActiveSheet iHPBs = .HPageBreaks.Count iVPBs = .VPageBreaks.Count lRow = 0 iCol = 0 If iHPBs > 0 Or iVPBs > 0 Then For lRow = iHPBs To 1 Step -1 If .HPageBreaks(lRow).Location.Row <= lActiveRow Then Exit For Next lRow For iCol = iVPBs To 1 Step -1 If .VPageBreaks(iCol).Location.Column <= iActiveCol Then Exit For Next iCol End If iPage = (lRow + 1) + (iCol * (iHPBs + 1)) .PrintOut From:=iPage, To:=iPage, Preview:=True MsgBox "Previewed page " & iPage End With If ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).FormulaR1C1 = " " Then _ Selection.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).ClearContents End Sub

This macro is actually a variation on any number of macros you could find with some sleuthing on the Internet. There are two key parts to itfirst the macro figures out which "page" you are on in the worksheet, and then it uses the .PrintOut method with the Preview parameter set to True, resulting in Print Preview being invoked.

One some worksheets this macro may work great, but it is quite fickle in whether it will work or not. In most of my testing, I was not able to get it to work, unless I used very small worksheets. (In other words, very few rows and columns.) If you run it on a large worksheet, you'll quickly see that you get a "Subscript Out of Range" error in the loop that examines members of the .HPageBreaks collection. How this could happen when you aren't using a member that is out of range (lRow never varies outside the value returned by the .Count property) is baffling.

It seems to be a problem that Microsoft acknowledges, though. In fact, it is a problem they have acknowledged, yet never fixed, for years:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/210663/

The suggested solution on the web page doesn't really work, though. So, we are stuck with a macro that only works reliably on worksheets where you wouldn't need to calculate the page number because you are only working with a single page. Aargh!

The bottom line is that a macro-based approach mayfor the foreseeable futurenot be viable for Michelle's needs. That leaves us with just the print-area approach, described at the beginning of this tip.