Formatting Rows

Rows are central to your worksheet in Excel and as such, can be formatted as a unit to change how they are displayed. Use the following articles about Excel's row formatting capabilities to make your columns appear just right.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

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

   Adjusting Row Height for a Number of Worksheets
Adjusting the height of a row or range of rows is relatively easy in Excel. How do you adjust the height of those same rows on a number of different worksheets? Here's how!

   Adjusting Row Height for Your Text
Want Excel to automatically adjust the height of a worksheet row when it wraps text within the cell? It's easy to do, relying upon two settings.

   Adjusting Row Height when Wrapping Text
If you have some cells merged in a worksheet, and you wrap text within that merged cell, Excel won't automatically resize the height of the row as it would with unmerged cells. This tip describes how you can work around this limitation.

   Adjusting to a Maximum Row Height
Need to check the height of all the rows in a worksheet and then adjust them if a particular criterion is met? This tip provides a macro that checks the rows and adjusts row height if it is above a threshold.

   Automatic Row Height For Merged Cells with Text Wrap
When you have text wrap turned on in a cell, Excel expands the height of the row as you add more text to the cell. When you merge two cells that have text wrap turned on, Excel won't adjust the row height to accommodate the text in the cell. This can, of course, cause problems. How you deal with this situation is described in this tip.

   Automatic Row Height for Wrapped Text
When you format a cell so that the information within it can wrap to multiple lines, you may be surprised if Excel doesn't adjust the row height to display all those lines. Here's why this can happen and what you can do about it.

   Changing Default Row Height
Changing the default row height used for a worksheet is relatively easy, as long as you don't mind the row height never varying from what you set. If you want Excel to be able to still adjust the row height above your default, things get a bit trickier.

   Changing Width and Height to Inches
Want to set the width and height of a row and column by specifying a number of inches? It's not quite as straightforward in Excel as you might hope.

   Detecting Hidden Rows
Excel allows you to easily hide rows in a worksheet, so their contents are not visible. Figuring out how to detect where those hidden rows can be a very manual process�"unless you use some of the ideas in this tip.

   Formatting Subtotal Rows
Excel automatically formats subtotals for you. But what if you want to change the default to something more suitable for your worksheet? Here's how to change the formatting of subtotals whether you use them sparingly or frequently.

   Hiding a Huge Number of Rows
Need to hide a large number of rows? It's easy to do if you combine a few keyboard shortcuts. Here are several techniques you can use.

   Hiding and Unhiding Rows
When building a worksheet, you may need to hide some of the rows or unhide other, previously hidden, rows. It's easy to do; here's how.

   Increasing Row Height for Printing
You may have a need to increase the height of the rows in your worksheet to "spread out" the data when it is printed. This tip provides macros that allow you to do such spreading, along with a macro to set your row height back to normal.

   Setting Row Height
When you enter information into a row on a worksheet, Excel automatically adjusts the height of the row based on what you enter. If you want to override the height that Excel chooses, apply one of the techniques described in this tip.

   Sizing Columns and Rows Using the Keyboard
Are you a keyboard-only user wondering how you can set column width or row height without using the mouse? This tip provides three different approaches you can use.

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