The Margins tab allows you to manipulate the size of the top, bottom, left and right margins and the size of the margins for the header and footer. You can also choose to center the print both horizontally and vertically from this page.

The default margins for Excel are:
• .75 inch for the Left and Right Margins
• 1.0 inch for the Top and Bottom Margins
• .5 inch for the Header and Footer areas.

These margins are fairly generous for an Excel report. Reducing the left and right margins to .25 and the top and bottom margins to .50 provide you with more space to display your worksheet on a single page. Rarely would you want to adjust the margin settings for the header and footers.

On the Margins Page of the Page Setup dialog box, click on the up and down arrows of the incremental spin buttons to increase or decrease the margin size. You can also type in a value for your margin in the spin box. For example, if you decide you want to reduce the top margin to .50, then click inside the spin box and type .50 to replace the value that is contained in the box.

The margins tab has two options for centering your report on the page. You can center vertically or horizontally or you can select both for a perfectly centered report. Click on the check box(s) to make your centering choice.

If you are a visual person there is a 2nd methodology that you can use to adjust your page margins. This methodology is available through the Print Preview feature as follows:

• Click on the Margins button on the button bar of the Print Preview feature
• Drag the margin lines to the position you want for your report.

When you are in the Margin feature of Print Preview, you will see two margin lines at the top and bottom. The outer margin lines adjust the width of the header and footer areas. The inner margin line adjusts the page margin. When you use this method, you can numerically see the effects of the changes you made on the Margins page of the Page Setup dialog box.

Since space is at a premium when working with spreadsheet reports, adjusting your margins give you additional control over the layout of your document.