Page 42 - Excel Workbook for Dummies

06_798452 ch02.qxp 3/13/06 7:34 PM Page 25
Chapter 2: Formatting the Spreadsheet 25

1. Use the AutoFit feature to widen Column B containing the furniture descriptions
sufficiently so that none of these descriptions are cut off.
2. Drag the right border of Column C to the left until the column is 33 pixels wide
and then release the mouse button (note the appearance of ### indicators in all
but two cells in the Sale table). Next, use AutoFit to widen Column B so that all
the entries in this column are displayed.
3. Use the Column Width dialog box to set column E to a width of 10 characters.
4. Narrow column A to 7.14 characters or 55 pixels wide (use any method that
works).
5. If you’ve been modifying your Spring Furniture Sale.xls file, click the Save button
on the Standard toolbar or press Ctrl+S to save your changes. If you’ve been
modifying the Exercise 2-1.xls file, choose File➪Save As or press F12 to open the
Save As dialog box and then rename Exercise 2-1.xls to Spring Furniture Sale.xls in
the File Name text box. Make sure that the My Practice Spreadsheets folder
inside My Documents is selected as the location in the Save In drop-down list
before you select Save.

Manipulating the height of certain rows

You don’t find yourself having to resize the rows of a worksheet all that much. Most of
the time, Excel does all the work for you by automatically resizing them just right to
accommodate any and all formatting changes you make to their cells.

About the only time you might want to increase the height of a row on your own is
when you want to increase the space between the contents of one row and the con-
tents of the row immediately above without going through the trouble of inserting a
blank row as a spacer between them.

Q. How can I manually modify the height of row numbers in the row header) and
selected rows in a worksheet? then drag just the lower border of just
one of the selected rows.
A. You should be familiar with both of these • Position the cell cursor in any one of the
methods for changing row height: cells in the row to be modified, and then
choose Format➪Row➪Height, and then
• Drag the lower border of the number of
the row to modify in the row header enter the number of points in the Row
either up (to shorten the row) or down Height text box before you select OK.
(to heighten the row). To modify multiple To modify multiple rows at one time,
rows at one time, select the rows (by select the rows before opening the Row
dragging through or Ctrl+clicking their Height dialog box.

Try It

Exercise 2-2: Modifying Row Heights in a Spreadsheet

In the Spring Furniture Sale.xls workbook, practice modifying row height by doing the
following:

1. Increase the height of Row 2, which contains the table title, to 26.25 or 35 pixels
by dragging the row’s border.
Note how the spreadsheet title sinks down when the row height is increased.