columns

I bet you didn't know that you could make MS Excel resize multiple columns in one fell swoop did you? Yes, that's right, you can resize them so that each will accommodate its longest line perfectly. I am sure that you all know how to fiddle with the ... width of columns in MS Excel by now. You can go to each column and click your mouse and then drag the column to widen it. But that is the old fashioned way! We are all about saving time and keystrokes right? Darned right we are! Follow the steps below to learn how to save some time and keystrokes: Position your mouse at the right-hand column ... (view more)

A reader asked if there was any formula in Excel that would convert a date shown in the European format of day-month-year to the U.S. version of month-day-year. Technically, it may not be necessary to do this. Excel maintains dates as numeric values ... and displays them using various formats. If the dates are numeric values in your worksheet, then you can simply change the format and the dates will be displayed in the U.S. format. The day you see in a worksheet could instead be a text value rather than a numeric value. To see if the date is truly an Excel date or text value, you can change the ... (view more)

Both rows and columns of a worksheet can be outlined or grouped. Outlining provides a way to organize details. Outlines can be collapsed or expanded to hide or show detail within the data list. Once defined, the group of rows or columns can be ... expanded or collapsed to display or hid the detail contained within them. Follow the steps below to group rows or columns in a worksheet: Select the rows or columns to be grouped. Choose Data | Group and Outline | Group. To remove the grouping follow these steps: Select the rows or columns to be ungrouped. Choose Data | Group and Outline | Ungroup. ... (view more)

Another way to create a table in MS Word is to draw it by using two buttons found on the Tables and Borders toolbar. Using your mouse, you can drag a rectangle on the screen and then divide it into rows and columns of varying sizes and shapes. When ... the table you're creating is a simple grid, using the Table button works well. But sometimes you want larger and smaller cells, rows, having different numbers or sizes of columns, or various columns divided into several row arrangements. In this case, you can use the Draw Table feature to sketch out the exact structure of the table at the outset, ... (view more)

You may think you can delete a row or column by selecting it and pressing Delete. But what that does is remove the text, leaving empty cells behind. To remove a row or column completely, you must select it and then choose a menu selection. Choose ... Table | Delete, and then specify Table, Columns, Rows, or certain cells. Right-click and choose Delete from the shortcut menu. If you have a row selected, the shortcut menu will say Delete Row; if you have a column selected, it will say Delete Column. When a column is deleted, the column widths may adjust themselves. The easiest way to delete an ... (view more)

Once you've begun a table, you can easily change its structure. You can change the width of the columns to fit the text, and you can also insert, delete and rearrange the rows and columns any way you like. Even though you established the overall ... table structure when you first created it, you may find that more or fewer columns or rows are needed after you start entering text. It would be a real pain if you had to delete the table and start all over again just because you needed to rearrange or restructure. Luckily, Word gives you great flexibility in modifying the table structure. Change ... (view more)

You know how to use Tabs in MS Word, but more often you will use tables to align text horizontally. Tables are used whenever you must keep items side by side. You do this by laying out a grid. The best thing about tables is that in the grid you can ... align any amount of text -- sentences, paragraphs or even pictures -- side by side. When you want to keep text side by side in a document, create a table. This grid-like structure can contain short text, such as a number, long text, a sentence, paragraph, or several paragraphs. A table keeps the items properly aligned in columns and rows, so you ... (view more)

When your spreadsheet has labels in the top row or left column to describe the data in the cells, you can freeze those rows and columns so that they always appear on screen even when you scroll down or to the right. Open MS Excel and in the first ... row type your headings (i.e. Category, Title, Author, Quantity, Costs, etc.) In the left-most column, type other data labels (i.e. Fiction, Non-Fiction, Sci-Fi., etc.) When you use the Window | Freeze Panes command, everything above the current row or to the left of the current column is frozen in place. This way, it's always visible to you, even ... (view more)

A newsletter or article usually begins with a larger title or headline. To have a headline span the width of several columns in MS Word, it must be formatted with a different number of columns. Formatting Pages with Section Breaks Whenever you have ... different page-level formatting applied to a single document, you need to break it into different sections with something called a "section break." In doing so, sections of a document can be formatted with different margins, page orientation, number of columns, headers and footers, page numbering, et cetera. For example: in a newsletter ... (view more)

By default, Word's normal template is set to single-column format; thus, when you type a paragraph, you are typing in single-column format. You can mix column with paragraph formats in the same document by simply changing the column format. For ... example, you may want to have your document open with an introductory paragraph or two, while the rest of the text is formatted in three columns. To do this, follow these steps: Type the opening paragraphs. Put your cursor where you want to begin the multi-column text. Go to Format | Columns. Enter 3 for the Number Of Columns, and make any necessary ... (view more)