Page 25 - Excel Timesaving Techniques for Dummies

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Technique 1: Customizing the Excel Screen Display
in only the active worksheet. Using this command 3. Enter the new row height in characters
has no effect on the width of columns that you man- (between 0 and 255) in the Row Height
ually resized or resized with the AutoFit feature. text box.

If you want to change the default column Setting the row height to 0 is the equivalent of
width for all the worksheets in your workbook, hiding the row in the worksheet by choosing
select all the sheets (by Ctrl+clicking their Format➪Row➪Hide. You can use this technique
sheet tabs or right-clicking the tab of the to hide rows you use in calculating worksheet
active sheet and then clicking Select All Sheets formulas but don’t necessarily want to appear
on the shortcut menu) before you open the in the printout. However, if you enter 0 here
Standard Width dialog box and set a new when all the rows of the worksheet are selected,
default value. standard width, you hide all the rows in the
entire worksheet, making it impossible to add,
edit, or print data in any of its cells!
Setting a new standard row height
Note that Excel doesn’t provide an equivalent com- 4. Click the OK button to close the Row Height
mand for setting a new default height for all the rows dialog box.
in a worksheet. This is probably because the program
Excel changes the height of all the rows in the
automatically adjusts the height of the row to accom- worksheet.
modate the data that you enter in its columns. If
you’re creating a spreadsheet where you would To remove the cell selection from all the rows in the
benefit by having a new standard row height (pre- column whose heading you clicked, click any single
sumably, a taller one), you can set all the rows cell with the mouse pointer.
in the worksheet to a new height by using this
work-around:
Modifying the number of sheets in a workbook
1. Click a letter in the Column header. In the olden days of Excel, when the program first
Clicking a column letter in the Column header started supporting the use of more than one work-
selects all the rows in that column in the sheet in a single spreadsheet file, the program auto-
worksheet. matically provided each new workbook that you
opened in the program with 17 blank worksheets.
2. Choose Format➪Row➪Height. In the more recent versions of Excel (all those in the
Excel opens the Row Height dialog box, shown 2000 series), the program default has been lowered
in Figure 1-4. to a much more modest three sheets in every new
workbook. For some users, 17 was far too many
sheets for their modest spreadsheet needs, and for
others, three sheets are far too few for the types
of complex spreadsheets they routinely create.

Although Excel makes it easy to insert new work-
sheets in a workbook (you simply choose Insert➪
Worksheet to pop a new one in), if you find yourself
having to manually add new sheets to many of the
• Figure 1-4: Designating a new row height for all the new workbooks you start, you should probably mod-
selected rows in a worksheet. ify the default number of sheets that Excel adds to
all new workbooks: