Print multiple pages on one sheet

If you regularly print large documents or send printed copies of them through the mail, you can save on both paper and postage by using Microsoft Word's Zoom feature. With Zoom, you can print as many as 16 pages on a single sheet of paper.

Printing multiple pages on one sheet also makes it easier to check your document's page layout, such as odd and even page headers and footers in a 200-page document.

To print four pages to a sheet, follow these steps:

1. Go to File | Print.
2. In the Zoom section, select 4 Pages from the Pages Per Sheet drop-down list.
3. Make any other print selections, and click OK.
Zoom automatically reduces the scale to fit four pages on each sheet. Zoom reduces the size of your printout without changing the document's format or page layout settings.

Microsoft Excel

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Create a list box to ensure data entry accuracy

A list box makes it easier for Microsoft Excel users to avoid errors. For example, a State field requires users to know the two-letter abbreviation for each state. To ensure accuracy, let users select from a list.

To create a list for the State field cells, follow these steps:

1. Select all the cells in the State column.
2. Go to Data | Validation.
3. On the Settings tab, select List from the Allow drop-down list.
4. In the Source text box, enter the allowable entries separated by commas as follows: NJ, NY, PA, DE, etc.
5. Select the In-cell Dropdown check box.
6. Click OK.

When users move to a cell in the State column, Excel displays a drop-down arrow. Clicking the arrow reveals a list of allowable states users can select for that cell. If users attempt to type an entry that's not on the list, Excel displays an error message.

Microsoft Access

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Create controls that grow with an Access report's data

When you print a report in Microsoft Access, some of the data may be missing from variable-length fields (such as Memo fields) because the text box controls aren't large enough to display all of the data. You can manually resize the control to accommodate the additional data, or you can set the Can Grow property to automatically expand the text box vertically depending on the contents of the field for each record.

To take advantage of the Can Grow property, follow these steps:

1. In Design view, right-click the text control you want to resize, and select Properties.
2. On the Format tab, click Can Grow, and select Yes from the drop-down list.

When you run the report, the control will automatically expand to accommodate additional lines of data when the data is larger than the control.

Data that's too short for the defined size of a text control will cause Access to print blank lines. To have the control automatically resize to eliminate blank lines, follow the same steps for the Can Shrink property.