This user's spreadsheet is fighting back, and that frustration is a signal, not a failure. A First Responder class deserves a form that fits a notebook, not a tool that refuses to cooperate. When you flip to landscape and the cells simply will not shrink to the dimensions you need, you have hit a wall, one built by a program designed for endless rows and generic print jobs, not for precise, physical constraints.
This is not a skill gap. You know your dimensions. You know your layout. The spreadsheet itself is the problem. Traditional tools like Excel treat page size as an afterthought, a setting buried in menus rather than a first-class design parameter. They assume your data will flex around the page, not the other way around. For anyone who needs a real-world object, a card, a form, a notebook insert, that assumption breaks down immediately. You are not asking for anything unusual. You are asking a tool to honor the physical world, and it is refusing.
What you should try is not another hidden checkbox or print scaling hack. You should explore a tool that thinks about layout the way you do: from the page outward. AI-native spreadsheets can interpret your intent, a 5 3/4 by 3 3/4 inch landscape form, and build the grid to match, not the other way around. They can let you set exact dimensions, lock cell sizes, and even suggest layouts based on the content you plan to enter. The goal is not to fight the software into submission; it is to tell the software what you need and have it respond intelligently.
Stop wrestling with a spreadsheet that treats your notebook like an afterthought. A smarter tool will let you define the page first, then fill it. For a First Responder class, every second and every inch matters. Your form should fit your notebook, not the other way around.