Do you want to learn how to print notes in Microsoft Excel? You’ve landed on the appropriate page. Keep reading!

Notes and comments on an Excel dataset add additional context to the existing data. You and your collaborators can exchange thoughts and feedback with notes. Also, you or the collaborators can ask questions or request clarifications through notes.

If you ever wish to print these notes along with the Excel spreadsheet, but don’t know how, it’s perfectly okay. Follow along with the methods outlined below and choose one that suits your requirements. Let’s begin!

Using the Print Preview Tool

Navigate to the worksheet that you wish to print, along with all of its notes.

Press Ctrl + P to bring up the Print Preview screen.

Click on the Page Setup link at the bottom of the Print setup navigation panel. The screenshot marks it to help you find it.

The Page Setup dialog box will open.

Click on the Sheet tab in the Page Setup dialog box.

You should see the Comments and notes field below the Print section in the Sheet tab. Click on that.

Select the As displayed on sheet (notes only) option in the drop-down list that opens.

Click OK to save the modification you have made.

You should now see the notes on the Print Preview screen as you saw them on the worksheet.

If the note objects seem too cluttered for you, go back to the Page Setup dialog box, select Sheet, and change the Comments and notes preference to At the end of sheet.

Now, you should see the notes being printed at the end of the report you’re printing.

So these are the two ways you can show the notes on printed worksheets.

Using the Page Layout Menu

You can also access the Page Setup dialog box from the Page Layout menu. Let me walk you through the process.

Open the source worksheet from which you wish to print notes.

Click on the Page Layout tab in the Excel ribbon menu.

You should see a tiny arrow pointing downwards in the bottom right corner of the Page Setup commands block. Click on this arrow.

The Page Setup dialog box will show up.

You can now go to the Sheet tab, go to the Print section, and choose from any of the following two options for Comments and notes:

1. At the end of sheet
2. As displayed on sheet (notes only)

Click OK to save the changes you’ve made. Now print your Excel worksheet as a report, and you should see that the notes have been printed as you’ve selected in the Sheet tab of the Page Setup tool.

Excel will print the notes on the last page of the report you’re printing. The notes aren’t, however, printed on the last page that contains a small portion of the actual data being printed. Instead, a completely new page is added at the last to print only the notes. So the notes and the datasets stay separate.

Using the Sheet Options Commands Block

You can also access the Sheet Options tab of the Page Setup dialog box instantly and then enable the necessary Print features in Excel to print notes.

Open the source worksheet and navigate to the Page Layout tab.

Click on the Sheet Options arrow in the bottom right corner of the Sheet Options commands block.

You can now easily choose the format for notes printing in Excel from the Comments and notes section in the Sheet dialog box.

In the methods explained so far, you’ve seen that the notes are printed at the end of the original report, in a separate sheet when you select the At end of sheet option for Comments and notes in the Sheet Options dialog box.

Sometimes, you might only need to print the notes and not the whole dataset. To do that, press Ctrl + P to bring up the Print Preview screen.

Go to the Print Settings section and enter the last page number of the document being printed in the Pages to field.

For example, if there are only 2 pages in the document and the second page contains the notes, enter 2 in both the fields of the Pages section.

Using Excel VBA

Printing notes in Excel can become a bit hectic if you simply follow the methods that rely on the user interface buttons and commands. If you’re a busy professional and wish to automate the process from scratch, you can use the Excel VBA macro scripting technique.

Even if you haven’t used Excel VBA until today, nothing to worry about. I’ll walk you through the whole process, and you’ll learn an expert Excel skill today.

Firstly, visit the following Excel tutorial to learn the process of creating a macro from a VBA script:

📒 Read More: How To Use The VBA Code You Find Online

Now that you know how to create a VBA macro, let me show you the script you can use to print notes in Excel:

Sub PrintNotesFromWorksheets()
    Dim ws As Worksheet, noteWs As Worksheet
    Dim wsChoice As String, inputSheets As String
    Dim selectedSheets As Collection
    Dim cmt As Comment
    Dim noteRow As Long
    Dim msg As String
    Dim totalNotes As Long
    Dim noteCounts As Collection
    Dim sheetName As Variant
    
    ' Create a new sheet to store notes
    Set noteWs = ThisWorkbook.Sheets.Add(After:=ThisWorkbook.Sheets(ThisWorkbook.Sheets.Count))
    noteWs.Name = "Collected_Notes_" & Format(Now(), "hhmmss")
    
    ' Set headers
    With noteWs
        .Range("A1").Value = "Author"
        .Range("B1").Value = "Note Text"
        .Range("C1").Value = "Cell Address"
        .Range("D1").Value = "Worksheet"
    End With
    noteRow = 2

    ' Ask user for scope
    wsChoice = InputBox("Enter one of the following options:" & vbCrLf & _
                        "1 = Current Worksheet" & vbCrLf & _
                        "2 = Entire Workbook" & vbCrLf & _
                        "3 = Specific Worksheets (you'll be prompted)", _
                        "Select Note Source", "1")
    
    If wsChoice = "" Then Exit Sub ' Cancel clicked
    
    Set selectedSheets = New Collection
    Set noteCounts = New Collection
    
    On Error Resume Next
    Select Case wsChoice
        Case "1"
            selectedSheets.Add ActiveSheet, ActiveSheet.Name
        Case "2"
            For Each ws In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
                If ws.Name <> noteWs.Name Then selectedSheets.Add ws, ws.Name
            Next ws
        Case "3"
            inputSheets = InputBox("Enter worksheet names, comma-separated:", "Specific Worksheets")
            If inputSheets = "" Then Exit Sub
            For Each sheetName In Split(inputSheets, ",")
                sheetName = Trim(sheetName)
                Set ws = Nothing
                Set ws = ThisWorkbook.Sheets(sheetName)
                If Not ws Is Nothing And ws.Name <> noteWs.Name Then selectedSheets.Add ws, ws.Name
            Next sheetName
        Case Else
            MsgBox "Invalid option selected. Exiting.", vbExclamation
            Exit Sub
    End Select
    On Error GoTo 0

    ' Extract notes
    For Each ws In selectedSheets
        Dim wsNoteCount As Long: wsNoteCount = 0
        For Each cmt In ws.Comments
            noteWs.Cells(noteRow, 1).Value = cmt.Author
            noteWs.Cells(noteRow, 2).Value = cmt.Text
            noteWs.Cells(noteRow, 3).Value = cmt.Parent.Address
            noteWs.Cells(noteRow, 4).Value = ws.Name
            noteRow = noteRow + 1
            totalNotes = totalNotes + 1
            wsNoteCount = wsNoteCount + 1
        Next cmt
        noteCounts.Add wsNoteCount, ws.Name
    Next ws
    
    ' Autofit and print
    noteWs.Columns("A:D").AutoFit
    noteWs.PrintOut
    
    ' Confirmation message
    msg = "Notes printed: " & totalNotes & vbCrLf & vbCrLf
    For Each sheetName In noteCounts
        msg = msg & noteCounts.Key(noteCounts.Count - noteCounts.Count + 1) & ": " & sheetName & " notes" & vbCrLf
    Next
    MsgBox msg, vbInformation, "Print Summary"
End Sub

The above script allows you to print notes in the following ways:

1. Give you an option to print notes from three choices. These are from the active worksheet, the whole workbook, or a few worksheets.

2. If you choose a few worksheets, then you can name the worksheets in a comma-separated format.
3. The notes are reorganized into a table that has three columns.

2. These are the author name column, the notes column containing the text, and the cell address for the notes listed in the table.

5. The script guides you through printing the output on paper.

6. You can also print the output as a PDF.

Once you’ve created the VBA macro, press Alt + F8 to launch the Macro dialog box.

Select the PrintNotesFromWorksheets macro and hit Run.

The macro will show some visual prompts. Follow those to print notes from the source worksheet in your preferred way.

Print Notes in Excel for Mac

Printing notes in Excel for Mac is quite similar to that of the Windows Excel app. Let me walk you through the process below:

Open the source workbook and navigate to the worksheet that contains the notes.

Navigate to the Page Layout tab in the Excel ribbon menu and click on the Page Setup command.

The Page Setup dialog box will show up. Click on the Sheet tab.

Go to the Print Options section on the Page Setup dialog box and click on the Comments drop down menu.

Choose either At end of sheet or As displayed on sheet option.

Press Ctrl + P to bring up the Print dialog box.

Select a printer and continue with the printing process, and you should get the notes on the paper sheet.

Conclusions

Now you know how to print notes in Microsoft Excel using various user interface methods as well as using Excel VBA automation.

Try out the methods mentioned above and choose one or two that match your expertise in Microsoft Excel.

Use the comment box given below to share your suggestions and feedback.