# How to serialize document copies in MS Excel / Open Office Calc?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-serialize-document-copies-in-ms-excel-open-office-calc/389058>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 23, 2007, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-serialize-document-copies-in-ms-excel-open-office-calc/389058 "2007-01-23T05:34:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Chasing\_Dreams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/258eb7/32.png) [@Chasing\_Dreams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chasing_Dreams)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-serialize-document-copies-in-ms-excel-open-office-calc/389058/1 "2007-01-23T05:34:33Z")

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I need help with a printing problem. I’m using Microsoft Excel / Open Office Calc. I have a page that I want to print. I want to print multiple copies of this page. On each page, I want it numbered so I can keep track of the individual copies. For example, say I want three (3) copies of a page. I want them numbered “Copy 1”, “Copy 2”, and “Copy 3”. Does anyone know how to do this without replicating the page?

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**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-serialize-document-copies-in-ms-excel-open-office-calc/389058/2 "2007-01-24T17:51:33Z")

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I can’t try it here since I don’t have a printer attached, but OpenOffice (and Excel too, IIRC) has a macro recorder that might work. Start the recorder, set a cell to “Copy 1”, then File | Print, change the cell to “Copy 2”, File | Print, and so on. End the recording and then run the macro. Try with only two or three copies of a little dummy sheet to start.

(A more flexible way would be to write a loop that will go around as many times as the value in some cell, printing a copy with each pass, but I’ll leave that for someone else.)

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**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-serialize-document-copies-in-ms-excel-open-office-calc/389058/3 "2007-01-24T18:11:54Z")

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I don’t think there is any easy way to do this except with a macro.