Resize a column

For a first trick, I'll start with something very basic. Advanced users, I apologize in advance for the simplicity of this post. Over the next several days, we'll work on building a spreadsheet that will increase in sophistication as we go.

Let's imagine we want to create a table to keep track of different sales tax rates in different states. We'll start by writing the taxes we want to track in a vertical column. In the row across the top of the column, we'll write down the names of the States we are going to track.

As you can see from the screenshot, the names of the taxes are wider than the default width of the column. To change this, the easiest way is to place the pointer of the mouse on the border between the two column names, as indicated below. You will know you are in the right place when the mouse pointer changes. Do a quick double click and just like that, the column width has auto-adjusted its size to match the widest entry. In this case, it is just wide enough for "State Sales Tax (Groceries)"

Although needed less often, this tip will also work the same way for row heights. Just double click on the border between two row numbers to increase the height

While the screen shot is from Excel 2007, this tip will work in all modern versions of Excel.