Formatting an Excel worksheet for printing can be frustrating.
While there are some options that can help you to fit your content to a page, you may need to manually define the size of some rows or columns so that they appear at a certain width on paper.
Our tutorial will show you how to switch views in your worksheet so that you can use inches to set your column width instead of the point size option available in the Normal view.
How to Use Inches for Excel Column Widths
- Open your worksheet.
- Choose the View tab.
- Select the Page Layout option.
- Choose the column letter to resize.
- Right-click the selected column and choose Column Width.
- Enter the width in inches and click OK.
Our guide continues below with additional information on how to set Excel column width in inches instead of points, including pictures of these steps.
The flexibility of the Excel application means that you can configure just about any setting for your spreadsheet that you might want to change.
One of these settings is the width of your columns and the height of your rows. Unfortunately, this setting is defined by a unit of measurement called “points” when you are changing the setting in the Normal view.
This isn’t very useful if you are defining your field widths to meet specific sizes. Fortunately, by changing the view in Excel you can also change the unit of measurement that is used, which allows you to set the column width in inches.
Our guide on how to name a column in Excel can show you an effective way to define a range of cells in your spreadsheet so that they are easier to reference.
How to Use Inches to Set the Width of Columns in Excel (Guide with Pictures)
The steps in this article were performed in the Excel for Office 365 version of the application, but will work in other versions of the program, too.
Step 1: Open your spreadsheet in Excel.
Step 2: Select the View tab at the top of the window.
Step 3: Click the Page Layout button in the Workbook Views section of the ribbon.
Step 4: Click the column letter of the column that you want to resize.
Step 5: Right-click the column letter, then choose the Column width option.
Step 6: Enter the desired column width in inches, then click the OK button.
Now that you know how to set the width of your Excel columns in inches you will better be able to size your cells if you need to print them.
Do you often work with spreadsheet data that includes a lot of negative numbers? Find out how to make those negative numbers red so that they are easier to identify in the spreadsheet.
Matthew Burleigh has been a freelance writer since the early 2000s. You can find his writing all over the Web, where his content has collectively been read millions of times.
Matthew received his Master’s degree in Computer Science, then spent over a decade as an IT consultant for small businesses before focusing on writing and website creation.
The topics he covers for MasterYourTech.com include iPhones, Microsoft Office, and Google Apps.