When it comes to using Microsoft's Excel Spreadsheet program there is no question that there are a variety of ways to accomplish many tasks. One of the things I like about Excel is the ability to format multiple columns at the same time giving them the same width.
If you are unfamiliar with how this is done, read on and take a look at the steps I perform to achieve this task. You will see that it is very easy to do.
The first thing you want to do, obviously, is open up Excel. Once Excel is displayed on your screen, go ahead and type in cell “A1” the month name “January”. In the cell “B1” type in the month name, “February”, in “C1” type in “March” and so on until you type in all twelve months each in their own cell on the spreadsheet.
Now that we have some test dummy data on our spreadsheet we can go ahead and reformat the column widths. You can add more data if you would like or even use an already existing spreadsheet. The choice is completely up to you; however the steps to reformat the column widths are all the same as you will soon see.
The next step is to highlight the columns that you want to reformat. To reformat the columns we are using in our example, using the month names, you need to click on the column header labeled “A”. Now hold down the “shift” key and click the column header labeled “L”. In other words you are clicking the first column and the last column. If you chose to use your own spreadsheet, your columns that you use may be different. You could also click on column header “A” and holding down the left mouse button, drag the cursor over top of the final column, in this case “L”, and let go of the mouse button. Either way is fine.
Now that the columns you want reformatted to a different size have been chosen, it is time to do just that. Using your computer's mouse, right click anywhere within the highlighted area. This will bring up a pop-up menu. On that menu is the option “column width”. Click on that option. This will bring up a window asking you to enter in the width of the columns. If there is a number already in that box you will need to erase that first by highlighting it and pressing your “delete” key. Now type in the number “12” and click the “Ok” button.
You should now see that all of the highlighted columns have changed to the size of 12. Repeat the steps above to alter the sizes and find one that looks more visually appealing for the spreadsheet that you are working on.
Remember that at anytime you can undo what you just did by clicking the “Edit” menu option at the top of the screen and click the sub-menu option of “undo”.
