Clever Clogs tip # 714
14 September 2022


Automatically fit the width of all columns (Microsoft Excel) *

Excel has 16,384 columns (and 1,048,576 rows) and there may be times you want to make all columns as wide as necessary, rather than doing them one by one.

Here's how:

  1. Click in an empty cell and press CTRL + A to select all cells. Alternatively, click in the top left corner, to the left of column A and above row 1.
  2. Point your mouse in between any of the selected columns and wait until the pointer changes to a double-headed arrow.
  3. Double-click.

That's all there's to it. I use it all the time and I could have sworn I wrote a tip about it. But trying to dig it out for one of my course participants earlier this week I realised I never did.

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* Unless stated otherwise this tip is written for Microsoft 365 desktop apps and Windows 10 users, but might also be useful in Office 2010, 2013 and 2016.