The Board Pack That Prints Five Pages and Locks Out Reviewers
FY25_Budget_Review.xlsx sits in a shared OneDrive folder with four reviewers. Sheet Summary holds 140 rows × 9 columns (A Item, B–G monthly amounts, H Total, I Notes). For Thursday's board pack it must be printed: currently it spills to five pages, the row of column headings appears only on page 1, columns G–I land on a page of their own, and the footer reads 'Page 1' on every page. Notes in column I wrap to three lines on some rows but not others. Separately, two reviewers opened the file at 10:00; the second got a yellow read-only banner and later found their edits to column H missing. Track Changes (legacy) is enabled on the workbook. Sheet protection is on for Summary, and the password was set by a colleague who has left. The reviewers need to add comments, not change formulas.
1. Give the page-setup sequence for the printed pack, in the order you would apply it, and flag the setting that can quietly make the output unreadable.
Read the worked answer
Work in View > Page Break Preview so each change is visible.
- Print Area. Select A1:I140 and Page Layout > Print Area > Set Print Area. Leaving the area unset is why blank trailing rows create spare pages.
- Print Titles. Page Layout > Print Titles > Rows to repeat at top = $1:$1 (or $1:$2 if there is a title row). This alone fixes 'headings only on page 1'.
- Fix the column overflow before scaling. Columns G–I spilling to their own page is usually width, not page size. Check column I: set Wrap Text and let row heights auto-fit - an inconsistent wrap is why some notes take three lines and others one. Narrow the month columns to a uniform width.
- Orientation and scaling. Landscape, then Page Setup > Scaling > Fit to 1 page wide by 0 tall; Excel computes the height. The trap is the resulting percentage: below roughly 60% the text is too small to read on paper. If it drops that far, do not force it - split the report into a summary page and a notes appendix, or repeat the key columns rather than shrinking everything.
- Footer. 'Page 1' typed as literal text repeats on all five pages. Replace it with &[Page] of &[Pages] and add &[Sheet] so the pack can be reassembled in order; &[Date] in the header is useful for a board pack.
- Legibility. Keep gridlines off, add a thin bottom border to the header row and light borders around totals, and centre horizontally on the Margins tab.
Finally, Print Preview and count the pages against the &[Pages] value.
2. Why did the second reviewer get read-only, and why were their edits to column H lost? What is the fix for the review cycle?
Read the worked answer
The read-only banner and the lost edits are one root cause: legacy Track Changes / 'Share Workbook'. That mode is a lock-based mechanism - the first person to open the file holds exclusive editing rights and everyone else is read-only, and their attempted changes are discarded rather than merged. It also cannot coexist with modern co-authoring, which needs the file on OneDrive or SharePoint, the .xlsx format, and AutoSave on.
Fix, in order:
- File > Info > Version History - recover the missing H-column edits first, before anything overwrites the versions again. If they are not there, ask that reviewer to re-enter from their own copy.
- Review > Track Changes > turn off; Review > Share Workbook > untick 'Allow changes by more than one user'; save.
- Reopen from the OneDrive/SharePoint path using the desktop app, not through a locally synced copy, and confirm the title bar shows AutoSave On.
- Verify co-authoring actually works by having two reviewers type into different cells simultaneously and watching both appear within seconds. Do not assume - test before Thursday.
For annotations, modern threaded comments co-author reliably and are the right tool; legacy notes are not.
3. The Summary sheet is protected and the password holder has left. What are your options, and how do you re-protect it so reviewers can comment but not edit formulas?
Read the worked answer
Getting in. Sheet protection is not encryption - the data is readable and copyable, it only blocks structural edits.
- Try Unprotect Sheet with a blank password. Protection applied in a hurry is frequently password-less.
- Failing that, restore a version from before the protection was applied via Version History.
- Or sidestep it: Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C on the used range, paste into a fresh sheet. Formulas and formats come across; the protection does not. Rebuild the print settings afterwards.
- Note the boundary: if the file is encrypted with a password to open, none of this applies and it genuinely cannot be recovered. That needs the original setter or a rebuilt file. Do not promise otherwise.
Re-protecting deliberately. Review > Protect Sheet, and tick only: Select locked cells, Select unlocked cells, and Edit comments (plus Edit objects only if reviewers must move charts). Leave Insert/Delete rows, Format cells, and Sort unchecked. Unlock H2:H140 if reviewers must type figures there; keep the formula columns locked, and consider Hidden so the formulas are not visible. Record the password in the team vault and put the owner's name in the file properties.
Re-test as a reviewer: confirm a comment can be added and an H-column figure edited, while typing into a formula cell is refused with a clear message.