Adjusting the height of your spreadsheet rows or the width of your columns can be a helpful way to make your data easier to read. But you may be having trouble getting several of your columns to the same width, as manually dragging the column boundaries can result in imprecise sizing. Fortunately Google Sheets has a way for you to set the size of a column with a pixel width, and that setting can be applied to multiple columns at once. Our guide below will show you how to select several columns at once, then set a specific pixel width for all of those columns so that they have the same width.
How to Set All Google Sheets Columns to the Same Width
Our guide continues below with more additional information on setting the column width for multiple Google Sheets columns, including pictures of these steps. Check out our tutorial on how to make a title in Google Sheets if you need to include the name of your worksheet on each page as you print.
How to Set the Column Width for Multiple Columns in Google Sheets (Guide with Pictures)
This article was performed in the desktop version of the Google Chrome Web browser, but you can use other desktop browsers like Firefox, Edge, or Safari instead.
Step 1: Sign into your Google Drive and open the Sheets file you wish to edit.
Step 2: Click and hold on the column letter of the leftmost column to adjust, then drag right to select the rest of them.
As we discussed above, you could also click on the first column letter, then hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and click on the last column letter that you wish to resize.
Step 3: Right-click on one of the selected columns and choose the Resize columns option.
Step 4: Enter the desired column width into the field, then click OK.
Now that you know how to make all columns the same width in Google Sheets you will be able to better structure your spreadsheets with equally-distributed columns. If you don’t like the size of the columns that you set, you can press Ctrl + Z on your keyboard to undo the resizing, then follow the steps above again to retry. Note that the default column width is 100 pixels. You also have the option to Fit to data, but that will likely result in differing column widths, as they will adjust based on the size of the largest cell in each column.
More Information on How to Make All Columns Same Width – Google Sheets
While we talked about clicking on the first column letter, then holding down the Shift key and scrolling to the right and clicking the last column letter to select everything, you could also click and drag to select column letters. Unfortunately you can’t use the methods to select all of your cells (such as clicking the gray button next to column A, or the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl + A) to do this more quickly. The column resizing options will be grayed out when you try with that method. If you aren’t resizing your columns to the maximum width of your data, then some of your data may not be visible. You might need to select some of your cells and change the text wrapping option for those cells if you want the day to display in a different manner. The same method that we discuss in this article can also be used to make a bunch of rows the same height. You would just use one of the options to select multiple rows, then choose the Resize rows option and set the desired height of those rows in pixels. Fortunately, you can just follow the same steps that you had used previously. Click inside one of your cells and press Ctrl + A to select all of your cells, then right-click on one of the selected columns and choose the Resize columns option. You will then be able to resize column widths to whatever width you would like. If someone has asked you to distribute your Google Sheets columns evenly, then it just means that they want all of the columns to have the same width. If that means that you need to select two columns and give them the same width, or you need to select every column in your spreadsheet, you can follow the steps in our guide to make that selection, then right-click one of the selected columns and use the Resize columns dialog box. Rather than right-click on a column or column heading to resize the columns, you would just need to right click on the row or rows that you wish to change, then choose the Resize rows option instead. You will then click inside the height field when the menu pops up and set the desired row height. He specializes in writing content about iPhones, Android devices, Microsoft Office, and many other popular applications and devices. Read his full bio here.
