Column Formatting

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Column Formatting' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Centering Across Columns
Excel allows the headings of a workbook to be centered across several columns.

Changing Column Width
Easily change column widths with this Excel tip.

Countering Compressed Columns
If you open a workbook and find that the width of some of your columns has been changed, the discovery can be frustrating. Here's some ideas on why this might occur in some workbooks.

Double-Clicking to Widen Columns Won't Work
A common way of adjusting the width of a column is to double-click the dividing line at the right edge of the column. Such an easy approach doesn't work in all instances, however.

Hiding and Unhiding Columns
Want to hide a column so it doesn't appear in the worksheet? It's easy to do using the formatting capabilities of Excel.

Hiding Columns Not within a Date Range
Many people use Excel to track lots and lots of data. Hiding some of that data based upon some criteria, such as whether the data is outside of a date range, can be very helpful. This tip illustrates such a scenario and shows how you can use a macro to hide one range of columns while displaying another, all based upon the current date.

Setting the Standard Column Width
Using Excel's menu option to set the standard column width for an Excel worksheet.

Understanding Column Widths
A handy explanation of how Excel determines the column widths.

Unhiding a Single Column
In a worksheet with lots of hidden columns it is a real pain to try to unhide just one or two columns. The best solution is to use a macro to do the unhiding, as described in this tip.

Unhiding Columns that are Persistently Hidden
If you were trying to format a worksheet and nothing you did could make the first two columns appear, would you be frustrated? (I know I would.) There are many potential reasons why those columns might not be visible, as described in this tip.