Page 40 - Excel Workbook for Dummies

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Chapter 2

Formatting the

Spreadsheet

In This Chapter
Resizing columns and rows in a worksheet
Formatting cells with the Formatting toolbar
Formatting cells with the Format Cells dialog box
Formatting tables with AutoFormat and ranges with Format Painter
Using Conditional Formatting
Hiding columns and rows in a worksheet

n Excel, formatting means formatting cells of the worksheet. Therefore, the formatting
Iyou assign a cell not only affects the cell’s current contents, but any contents you enter
into it. Performing the exercises in this chapter gives you a chance to practice widening
and narrowing the columns of rows of a worksheet to suit the formatting and contents of
its cells. You also discover a full array of techniques for assigning formatting to cells in a
worksheet, including using the Formatting toolbar and the Format Cells dialog box and the
AutoFormat and Conditional Formatting features.

Resizing Columns and Rows

In all new workbooks generated from the general Excel Worksheet template, all the columns
of its worksheets are a standard 8.43 characters or 64 pixels wide, and all the rows are 12.75
points or 17 pixels high. You can, if you need, change this default column width for an entire
worksheet by clicking its sheet tab to select it before choosing Format➪Column➪Standard
Width on the Excel menu bar. Then, you enter the new default width in the Standard Column
Width text box (in characters) before you select OK.

Note that Excel does not provide any way for setting a new row height default in a worksheet.
The 12.75-point default value is universal for all worksheets unless you manually override
this height. This is probably because Excel always automatically increases the height of all
rows to suit the formatting of its cell entries. Column widths, on the other hand, are automat-
ically widened only under certain circumstances (when applying certain AutoFormat styles
and building data tables with later versions of Excel).