[Upbeat music]
How can you save time inserting and editing rows and columns in an Excel
worksheet? I am Dawn Bjork The Software Pro.
I'm also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Certified Excel Expert.
Let's look at time-saving tips and shortcuts for working with rows and columns.
When you want to change the width of a column in a worksheet,
the easy way to do this is to simply move to the right-hand edge of that column
and you look for the double-headed arrow and simply click and drag to either
expand it or collapse it.
And understand that width information that you see when this is selected really
doesn't equate to inches or something that might be a common reference for you
or measurement. This will let you specify exactly what you want for that.
Now another option for that though is rather than trying to figure out exactly
how wide that should be, especially if you had a lot of content in this column,
simply move to that edge and double-click.
This is called AutoFit and it becomes a great way for most columns to be able to
automatically size them.
If we have multiple columns that we want to make consistent or to AutoFit,
we can select more than one
and once again,
you can move to the edge and you either have the option to increase or decrease
the width of all of the selected columns or double-click for AutoFit.
AutoFit can be a great way to quickly resize one or more columns.
It often doesn't work really well when you have lengthy headings, for instance,
because then you may end up with columns that are significantly wider than you
want or need. Adjusting the row height works very much the same way.
You can either move to the bottom edge of one of the rows that you want to
change or a selection of rows.
Think of this as like a little window shade. That is,
we can drag it up or down to adjust the height or double-click for best fit or
AutoFit. You'll also find these options in the Home tab of the Ribbon.
You'll find them under Format and here you can see Row Height,
AutoFit Row Height, and more.
This is a great way to explore how you can more effectively change the
appearance of your rows and columns.
What if you want to insert another cell or column or row? Well,
the easy way is to move to the location and then you have several different
options.
This could be to go to the Home tab and to choose Insert. From here,
we could choose to Insert Sheet Rows and now we have a new row.
Another option is to right-click.
This can be really handy to simply use the shortcut menu.
There's so many different options that are available to you immediately here
from the shortcut menu.
When we see an option like Insert or Delete followed by the dot,
dot, dot that tells us there is more,
meaning a dialog box where we provide Excel with more information.
So based upon our selection,
we would have the option to insert an entire row column or even just simply
shift these cells down while keeping the other ones to the right intact.
Here I'll choose Entire row.
My preference is to actually select before I insert here,
I can be more specific.
I want three new rows and because it's selected,
I'm a lot more specific about what I'm looking for.
I'll right-click and then insert is automatically then assumed that this is
inserting new rows. The delete commands simply work in reverse.
We can select the rows whether or not they have content,
right-click and choose Delete.
Explore these options in the Home tab for Insert and Delete as well as those
shortcuts in the shortcut menu. In some worksheets,
you may want to hide rows or columns of data because you don't want to print or
display formulas,
maybe columns with some working calculations or other data.
Keep in mind that if it's confidential information such as displayed here,
then hiding does not keep someone from being able to see it.
But if we were printing out to paper or to a PDF,
then this might be all that we need to do. So for instance,
to hide these columns,
I'll select them first and then simply right-click and here is Hide.
I can also find this as well under the Format command.
In the Home tab,
you'll be able to spot when columns or rows are hidden because the column labels
and row labels do not change and so we can see here that we have this gap.
Sometimes we accidentally hide and that is when we're working with that AutoFit
feature that is grabbing the right-hand edge of column.
If your intention might be to make it much narrower and you get a little carried
away, notice what happens here. I'm going from my width and changing it smaller,
smaller, smaller. As soon as it becomes zero,
then it ends up being hidden.
We can sometimes run into trouble too if it's a little bit greater than zero
because it's not technically hidden, but it's not necessarily visible.
Both of those are techniques to hide selected columns and or rows.
If you want to unhide,
one of the easiest things to do is to select the surrounding columns.
In this case,
I have a number of them and then we can right-click or go up to the Home tab and
choose from there, the Ribbon, here,
I'll simply choose Unhide.
If it's a little bit more challenging to bring those back,
for some reason you simply are unable to Unhide,
especially if it ended up being Column A,
then we often can select the entire worksheet.
We'll press CTRL+A to do so and then you can move to the right-hand edge of a
column and double-click to AutoFit.
What will happen is that action will cause all of those columns to be displayed
whether or not they had previously been hidden,
and the same approach works when you want to hide or unhide your rows.
Try these Excel techniques to make it easier to work with rows and columns in
your worksheets. For more tips and shortcuts and being productive with Excel,
head to TheSoftwarePro.com/Excel.
If this training was helpful,
please like and comment on this video and subscribe to this channel.
This is Dawn Bjork, The Software Pro. Thanks for watching.