What is a Print Preview?

Print Preview is one of the functionalities that helps users to see the pages layout before printing. It gives the users an idea of what pages look like when printed. By this, users can check whether there exist any errors or decide on the correct layout of the pages before printing. With the help of this, you can save reprinting time and paper.

To open this Print Preview functionality, open the toolbar and check for the print preview icon, or search for a file, and in that, choose the print preview option.

Microsoft word's Print Preview lets the document zoom in or out and shows multiple pages in a window. In MS Word, "Ctrl+F2" is used to open this print preview of the file you are in current time.

In many browsers, the print preview option is available, but in some other web browsers and applications, print preview is present as a built-in feature. Through this, it automatically gets opened when the print option is selected.

Many browsers and applications have icons to get and launch the preview feature. The tools such as Adobe Photoshop, where graphic technology is needed, have many advanced features in print preview, which include scaling the image and positioning the image as required before printing the designed page.

This print preview has many advantages in web development-related tools such as mark-up language editing applications like html, php, etc.

Internet Explorer is a web browser that is enabled with a print preview function to prevent accidents like print pages, but print papers get so dark that we cannot see anything, and it wastes the printer's ink. Internet Explorer preview option also allows modifying the margin, font, and color of the web page before printing.

Still, many browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox have auto-enabled print previews.

Microsoft word Print Preview

Document printing

• For document printing, first, choose "file" option and select print.
• Then all pages present in a document are selected automatically.
• If you want to print a particular un continuous page, use comma(',') to separate page numbers.
• If the user wants to print only any specific content within a document, then choose "file" and select "print" from the menu bar.
• After opening the print window, select the radio button to get the printer and finally select ok.
• Sometimes, we observe that many pages are printed on a single page by reducing the page size. To get this feature select the number of pages to print on a single page from the print window 'settings' option and click ok.

Print Preview in Microsoft Excel

Print preview is also available in Microsoft excel sheet; if we preview the excel sheet, it is always opened in Microsoft Office Backstage view; here users can modify the layout and page borders before users print.

For previewing the excel sheet:

1. Select the sheet which you want to preview.
2. Then select file > print > print preview
3. The shortcut key for preview is "Ctrl+P".

To print part or whole excel sheet:

1. To print only a single active sheet or complete workbook, go to the "print" box and then from “selection” select “Active sheets, Entire workbook”.
2. Then select print, and your worksheet is printed.

Print Preview features have advantages

• Saves the paper by editing the errored- document before printing.
• Contains the functionality of zooming out the small-sized letters by which the user can see the entire document and check for errors.
• Provides the feature of viewing multiple pages within the same document.
• It provides the functionality of editing the font, margins, and color of the font and helps in the orientation of the page.
• Can avoid results that we don't like, which wastes time and money.

Difference between print and print preview

The most basic and important difference between print and print preview is that the print option prints the document to a printer that is connected to a system. In comparison, print preview allows us to review the entire document before printing it on paper.

The print does not save any money and paper if any error occurs, but print preview allows us to save paper and ink in the printer in error conditions.

If a document is given to print, we cannot modify page contents. In the print preview, we can modify content.

So it is always recommended to use print preview first and after complete check only go for print option. This method gives you the right result.