Excel® 2010 Workbook for Dummies®

Chapter 3. Formatting the Spreadsheet

In This Chapter

• Resizing columns and rows in a worksheet

• Formatting cells with the Home tab of the Ribbon

• Formatting cells with the Format Cells dialog box

• Using Cell Styles

• Using Conditional Formatting

• Hiding columns and rows in a worksheet

In Excel, formatting means formatting cells of the worksheet. Therefore, the formatting you assign a cell not only affects the cell's current contents but any contents you enter into it. The exercises in this chapter give you a chance to practice widening and narrowing the columns and rows of a worksheet to suit the formatting and contents of its cells. In addition, you discover a full array of techniques for assigning formatting to cells in worksheets, using features found on the Home tab of the Ribbon as well as the good old Format Cells dialog box.

Resizing Columns and Rows

In all new workbooks generated from the general Excel Worksheet template, the columns of its worksheets are a standard 8.43 characters or 64 pixels wide and all the rows are 15 points or 20 pixels high. You can, if you need, change this default column width for an entire worksheet by clicking its sheet tab to select it before choosing Format

Note that Excel does not provide any way for setting a new row height default in a worksheet. The 15-point default value is universal for all worksheets you deal with unless you manually override this height. ...