Microsoft Office

Part I
Getting Started with Excel
CROSS-REF
Chapter 26 discusses another way to summarize worksheet data without showing all the
details — outlining.
To hide rows or columns in your worksheet, select the row or rows that you want to hide by clicking in the
row or column header. Then right-click and choose Hide from the shortcut menu. Or, you can use the commands
on the Home ➪ Cells ➪ Format drop-down list.
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You also can drag the row or column’s border to hide the row or column. You must drag the
border in the row or column heading. Drag the bottom border of a row upward or the border
of a column to the left.
A hidden row is actually a row with its height set to zero. Similarly, a hidden column has a column width of
zero. When you use the arrow keys to move the cell pointer, cells in hidden rows or columns are skipped.
In other words, you can’t use the arrow keys to move to a cell in a hidden row or column.
Unhiding a hidden row or column can be a bit tricky because selecting a row or column that’s hidden is difficult.
The solution is to select the columns or rows that are adjacent to the hidden column or row. (Select at
least one column or row on either side.) Then right-click and choose Unhide. For example, if column G is
hidden, select columns F and H.
Another method is to choose Home ➪ Find & Select ➪ Go To (or its F5 equivalent) to select a cell in a hidden
row or column. For example, if column A is hidden, you can press F5 and specify cell A1 (or any other
cell in column A) to move the cell pointer to the hidden column. Then you can choose Home ➪ Cells ➪
Format ➪ Hide & Unhide ➪ Unhide Columns.
Changing column widths and row heights
Often, you’ll want to change the width of a column or the height of a row. For example, you can make
columns narrower to accommodate more information on a printed page. Or you may want to increase row
height to create a “double-spaced” effect.
Excel provides several different ways to change the widths of columns and the height of rows.
Changing column widths
Column width is measured in terms of the number of characters of a fixed pitch font that will fit into the
cell’s width. By default, each column’s width is 8.43 units, which equates to 64 pixels.
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If hash symbols (#) fill a cell that contains a numerical value, the column isn’t wide enough to
accommodate the information in the cell. Widen the column to solve the problem.
Before you change the column width, you can select multiple columns so that the width will be the same
for all selected columns. To select multiple columns, either click and drag in the column border or press
Ctrl while you select individual columns. To select all columns, click the button where the row and column
headers intersect (or press Ctrl+A). You can change columns widths by using any of the following
techniques.
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Drag the right-column border with the mouse until the column is the desired width.
Choose Home ➪ Cells ➪ Format ➪ Width and enter a value in the Column Width dialog box.
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