Occasionally, you might want to print only part of a document. Perhaps you want to print a few paragraphs from a Word document to edit or just a few slides from a PowerPoint presentation to share with someone else. When this happens, print the current selection by following this technique — it’s available in all of the Office applications:

  1. Select the text, slide, range, and so on, that you want to print.
  2. From the File menu, choose Print (or press [Ctrl]+P).
  3. In the resulting Print dialog box, click the Selection option and click OK.


As easy as it is to print selections, the process doesn’t always work as you might expect:

  • Word prints only contiguous items. You can create a multiple selection of non-contiguous items, but Word won’t print them. Nor does Word print header and footer data in a selection print, which is what you’d probably expect.
  • Excel prints non-contiguous selections, but be forewarned: It prints each selection on a separate page.
  • PowerPoint prints a selection of slides, but it can’t print individual selections in a single slide.