A blank page appears at the end of a printout in Excel 2002 and Excel 2003 (288968)

MORE INFORMATION

The new Intelliprint functionality in Microsoft Excel seeks to eliminate the printing of blank pages at the end of a workbook. Intelliprint determines whether the last page of the workbook is blank, and if so, removes it from the print job.

Excel defines a blank page as a page with no content and no visible items.

The following list describes the rules that are used to determine whether a page is considered blank:

1. A page containing empty cells is considered to be blank.
   
   NOTE: Worksheets that contain the following are considered to be non-blank.
   • Cells containing formulas (even if they have blank results).
   • Cells with errors that are displayed as blank.
   • Cells with formatting to hide text by setting the text color the same as the background color.
2. Hidden rows and columns are not considered when whether a page is blank. Therefore, if a page contains nothing but data that is in hidden rows or columns, that page is still considered to be blank.
   
3. Pages containing objects only are considered to be blank if the following is true:
   • Print object is not selected on the Properties tab in the Format AutoShape dialog box.
     
     -or-
   • Hide all is selected under Objects on the View tab in the Options dialog box.
4. Pages containing borders and cell shading are considered to be non-blank.
   
   NOTE: When a cell is formatted with shading, even if that shading matches the original background formatting, that cell is considered to be non-blank. For example, if the standard background is white (Windows default color), and you choose Cells from the Format menu, and then select the color white from the color palette in the Cell Shading section on the Patterns tab, that page is considered to be non-blank even though nothing is visible.
5. Pages containing cell formatting such as bold, italics, or text color are considered to be blank if the cells are empty.
6. Print Titles do not cause a page to be considered non-blank.

Trailing blank page suppression is the default behavior of Excel. To override this behavior and print a trailing blank page, set a print area that includes the blank page.