Solved: Changing Cell Width in Excel

[turtleman49]

I'm sure this is easy but damn if I know how!.
In my spreadsheet I want to retain all the column widths, except the widths of certain cells on one row.. how the heck do I do that?

 

[Yorkshire Guy]

hi turtleman49,

sorry, that cannot be done!

But you can merge cells on a row (yuck, hate it, don't do it, gives you more problems than it's worth!),
or
centre a cell's value across a number of adjacent cells. that way it looks like it is wider than other cells:-
Select two or more cells on a row / Format / Alignment / Horizontal drop down / Centre across selection

HTH
Hew

 

[MRdNk]

Yea not possible, except in the ways described by Yorkshire Guy. And I have to agree with the hatred of cell merging - oh the pain!

 

[turtleman49]

Well Spit!
Seems like I'm always doing something painful!
I appreciate both your reply's and I guess I'll mess around with the helpful advise and see what I can mess up, or whatever causes the most pain.
I attached the spreadsheet so you can see what I'm doing, maybe someone has another idea to help out.
As anyone can see I'm trying to make the yellow row cells a bit longer to spell the variety type out but keep the green row with 3 cells under it for the sizes we have in that variety. If anyone has another way to skin a cat without all the pain I'd appreciate the help..

 

[MRdNk]

Yeah, no problem, really they're most painful when your working with lots of data, and many spreadsheets with merged cells that you suddenly discover.

However, that's why you come here.

Anyway, some questions:

1. What's the end result for your data?
2. How many records are you dealing with?

If you want to stay with Excel, there is a better way to organise your data, if you have 'variety type' groups as a column with each group in each row you'll be able to filter on the group and get all the values for that group displayed on screen. With only Row 1 as the headers (field names). Excel likes this layout, as its features are built around this setup.

However, if you're dealing with a lot of data, Access would be better.

 

[MRdNk]

This would be my suggestion, for a start in the right direction, I have cut a couple of things out, that you may want to consider where to put that data. This however this a better layout.

 

[turtleman49]

Cool... Your suggestion is what the sheet started out as.. LOL So at least I know I was on the right track!
As time went on I have/still have the issue of different sizes of each types of rootstocks, That's why I started the painful method

to answer your questions it's really two fold, mainly it's to allow our wholesale customers to see what variety we have and and the rootstock it's on and the sizes of each item it also allows me to keep at a glance our current inventory. So if I'm a customer I should be able to look at the Citrus list and see;
We have Limes & Lemons (variety)//Australian Finger Lime (variety type)//On "Sour" Rootstock (the root system)// and in "Liners", #5's, or #15's (sizes) and then the amount of each of the different sizes ,, in that case there's 16

So that's the pain part.. In the newer version of the sheet, under the rootstock (sour, ect. ect.) I don't have the cells to post the inventory with the different sizes

But I'm beginning to think I'm a masochist because I keep plugging away at it!..

 

[Zack Barresse]

Yea not possible...

You know what's really funny, I stumbled onto doing this somehow, but I can't reproduce it! I think it may have been a bug (Excel 2007).

 

[turtleman49]

LMAO

Oh the Pain!,
Odd how things that deal with Microsoft seem to happen like that...

I did follow Yorkshire Guy advice and have a sheet that works for us. It's nothing complex but it works...

I appreciate all the help the members have given me here... I really do