Once you have zoomed out enough, you can resize the column like you normally would, and then you can zoom back in.Įither of these options to resize column widths would also apply to adjusting row heights as well. Or, you can use the zoom controls, found in the bottom-right corner of Excel. To zoom in and out, you can hold down the Ctrl key and scroll on your mouse. The Zoom ControlsĪnother option is to use the zoom feature. Trivia Fact: 255 is the maximum cell width in Excel. That will resize your column so that the right edge is now visible on your screen. You can adjust that number to something smaller. This brings up the Column Width window with the current size of the column. If you right-click on the column header, you will get a menu where you can select Column Width. The best way to deal with this is to resize the column width (or row height if you are dealing with a row that is too tall).
It's even more frustrating on smaller monitors or in smaller windows. It can be frustrating to not necessarily be able to see the portion of the column that you want to see. So if you are working an older version of Excel, there are a couple of ways to resize your large columns or rows so that they are more manageable to work with. Smooth Scrolling is currently only available on the Beta channel for Microsoft 365, and will be released to additional channels in the future. With Smooth Scrolling, that's not an issue anymore.
If a column is larger than my screen width and I want to reduce the size by dragging the right side of the header to the left, I can't even see the right side of the column when the scrolling snaps me to the left side. Excel will snap you to a place you don't want to be because of the layout of the grid.īut with Smooth Scrolling, you can drag along the scrollbar with your mouse to exactly what you want to see, and when you take you finger off the mouse button, the screen will remain right where you want it.Īnother annoyance that Smooth Scrolling resolves is in regard to resizing. For example, there are times when you might want to compare information in adjacent columns or rows but you simply aren't able to view both of them at the same time because of their size. It may be a small change, but it alleviates a good amount of frustration. You might be thinking, “Why is this important? Does it really matter?” Then it will remain there when you stop scrolling.
Instead, there is a screentip telling you where the grid will snap to when you release your mouse.īut with Smooth Scrolling, you can now scroll to any portion of the large column (or row) and the screen will move as you scroll. If you were to use the scroll bar at the bottom of the page to move right, you wouldn't see the scrolling on your screen as you moved along the scroll bar.
Let's say you had a column that was extremely wide-wider than the width of your screen. That means it would always jump to the beginning of a column or row. Up until now, when you would scroll either vertically or horizontally, the scrolling would have a snap-to-grid behavior. Watch on YouTube & Subscribe to our Channel A Welcome UpdateĮxcel just fixed an issue that has been an annoyance to users for more than 35 years! They've just rolled out Smooth Scrolling.