YouTube viewer Bill sent in a question: "How can change column widths when I am half way down the column?" Bill is using Mac Office 2008. Though there isn't a way to do what Bill is asking, MrExcel offers up a possible solution to this challenge in Episode #1479.
...This episode is the video podcast companion to the book, "Learn Excel 2007 through Excel 2010 from MrExcel". Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 512 Excel Mysteries Solved! and 35% More Tips than the previous edition of Bill's book!
"The Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast Series"
MrExcel.com — Your One Stop for Excel Tips and Solutions. Visit us today!
...This episode is the video podcast companion to the book, "Learn Excel 2007 through Excel 2010 from MrExcel". Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 512 Excel Mysteries Solved! and 35% More Tips than the previous edition of Bill's book!
"The Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast Series"
MrExcel.com — Your One Stop for Excel Tips and Solutions. Visit us today!
Transcript of the video:
MrExcel Podcast is sponsored by Easy-XL. Learn Excel from MrExcel, Episode 1479 – Differing Column Widths All right. So today's question is sent in by Bill.
Bill is on a Mac - Excel 2008 for the Mac.
And he's sending in a great question.
Unusually Bill says, “Hey, halfway down a spreadsheet, how do I change the column?” Bill, you can't do that.
So what I'm envisioning is, he needs to present a report where up at the top, there's some header information.
And the header permission has some big wide column lists, and then some data, and that data has different column lists.
So down here, he probably wants to make the customer column wide enough for the longest value in the column, right but he doesn't want the labels, you know, at the top to be the same.
And there's no good way to do this.
Now I have a method for doing this and it involves breaking the spreadsheet into two pieces.
So the top piece is the header information, and I'm sure that Bill’s is larger than this.
And then the worksheet called bottom is for everything else.
And here, we're allowed to make these column widths be exactly how wide we want.
Now watch this cool trick.
And the trick has changed a little bit from Excel 2007 to Excel 2010.
So Bill, sitting there with Excel 2008 for the Mac, I have no clue exactly where it is going to be for him but first, we're going to take the top section and we're going to copy that, and then we're going to go back to the bottom section, Cell A1.
In Excel 2007, you would open this Paste drop-down at the bottom say, As Picture, and then a flyout will come out and say, As Picture Link.
Now in Excel 2010, we use the one that's called a Linked Picture.
Choose that and see, what we get now is, we get a picture here on our main worksheet.
That is a picture of everything on the other worksheet.
So you know the Column D is really wide here but in this case, it doesn't have to line up.
Column C is the wide column and that will work out just fine.
Now the thing that's not going to work here, this is great for presentation purposes.
We need to print this report.
I actually have a statement program that does four different sections all kind of lined up with different column widths, but you're not going to be able to enter data here.
They're going to have to go back to the other worksheet to enter the data.
So that's going to be a little bit frustrating if that's how it needs to work, but if it's just for printing, then this cool trick, this used to be called the Camera Tool - now called a Linked Picture, will solve the problem.
Okay.
Hey, I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Bill is on a Mac - Excel 2008 for the Mac.
And he's sending in a great question.
Unusually Bill says, “Hey, halfway down a spreadsheet, how do I change the column?” Bill, you can't do that.
So what I'm envisioning is, he needs to present a report where up at the top, there's some header information.
And the header permission has some big wide column lists, and then some data, and that data has different column lists.
So down here, he probably wants to make the customer column wide enough for the longest value in the column, right but he doesn't want the labels, you know, at the top to be the same.
And there's no good way to do this.
Now I have a method for doing this and it involves breaking the spreadsheet into two pieces.
So the top piece is the header information, and I'm sure that Bill’s is larger than this.
And then the worksheet called bottom is for everything else.
And here, we're allowed to make these column widths be exactly how wide we want.
Now watch this cool trick.
And the trick has changed a little bit from Excel 2007 to Excel 2010.
So Bill, sitting there with Excel 2008 for the Mac, I have no clue exactly where it is going to be for him but first, we're going to take the top section and we're going to copy that, and then we're going to go back to the bottom section, Cell A1.
In Excel 2007, you would open this Paste drop-down at the bottom say, As Picture, and then a flyout will come out and say, As Picture Link.
Now in Excel 2010, we use the one that's called a Linked Picture.
Choose that and see, what we get now is, we get a picture here on our main worksheet.
That is a picture of everything on the other worksheet.
So you know the Column D is really wide here but in this case, it doesn't have to line up.
Column C is the wide column and that will work out just fine.
Now the thing that's not going to work here, this is great for presentation purposes.
We need to print this report.
I actually have a statement program that does four different sections all kind of lined up with different column widths, but you're not going to be able to enter data here.
They're going to have to go back to the other worksheet to enter the data.
So that's going to be a little bit frustrating if that's how it needs to work, but if it's just for printing, then this cool trick, this used to be called the Camera Tool - now called a Linked Picture, will solve the problem.
Okay.
Hey, I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
