Adjusting Cell Margins for More White Space

Thanks for this advice, Allen. I found that by choosing a different Themes under Page Layout we can achieve different amounts of white space...which may just have to do with the fonts. "Parcel" for example, gives the reader more white space.

There is a way. Custom formatting with trailing blanks. e.g. mm/dd/yyyy" "
(see Figure 1 below)

Thank you, that was very simple and helpful.

@Gary:

If you don't mind oddly larger than single space spacing between words, "Distributed (Indent)" allows indenting and it indents both sides equally by the setting value so it maintains the centered look. But you could have oddness with short text in wider columns:

| Jicama wins handsdown |

even though the text has single spaces typed between each element.

(Another oddity with it occurs if you format the some text, not all, from inside the cell, not format the whole cell at once. Two formatted parts are needed, one in the last word, one earlier, though both can be in the last word:

(see Figure 1 below)

I set the left cell to Center vertically so you can see how its text would write right on over the next cell's text (the selected one) if I hadn't, or reduced the row height further. Odd. Wonder if it's from some sort of experiment by Excel folk? It's been around at least a couple years now.

(see Figure 2 below)

So probably of no or limited use, but maybe some help.

If interested, I included an earlier bit of work with it too.

No good of course if I have multi-line text in a cell with wrapping on. The only way then is to insert "thin" columns either side of the cell (and then fiddle with the cell borders etc).

It's a pity the "Center" cell alignment doesn't support an indent (which would then indent from each side). That would have solved my particular requirement.

Another way to add a precisely chosen (since you choose it, not Excel) amount of white space is to add a leading and trailing character, chosen by you, to a custom format in the "text" portion of the format.

There are up to four regions in a formatting code one can use. To set up 2 decimals, red and an en dash as a negative sign, showing zeros as just a 0 character, and text with a single space before and after you would use:

#,##0.00;[Red]–#,##0.00;0; @ ....... I put the ... characters in to illustrate the space at the end of the code

And advantage is you chose the width. A bigger one is that indenting done by Excel, as well as being limited to one side or the other, is BIG. Indent "1" and it is 2-3 characters wide of an indent, not 1 character. Odd, since Excel insists all width work should be in character widths... but there it is. So indented as above gives you the first example below while indenting via... well, indenting, gives you the second:

horse
horse

Not really fine control...

You can also specify different amounts on each side. How often one ahs to worry about BOTH sides, I don't know, but 800,000,000 users, some might need to.

Hi Dear
In excel 2007 cell alignment indent adjustment works horizontally for both right and left sides.
The other way is to leave a blank cell to sides we like to have spaces. we can format cell borders to seem as a single cell with indented margins.
Thank You.