Absolutely nothing is more aggravating that completing a spreadsheet and needing to add a row to make room for a new entry in the nice list you just built. Fortunately, Excel has made the adding and subtracting of rows and columns a snap. Let's take a look at how it's done and a few shortcuts to the process too.
The place to go to add rows or columns is Insert from the Menu. The choices are obvious. Simply select row or column as is needed. The big question is probably where will the row be added or where will the column be added? Follow this example and you should get the idea.
Notice the position where the highlighted cell was located when you inserted a row.
The mouse is located on a cell in Row 5 when the Insert Row choice is made.
As soon as you select Insert Rows, there will be a blank row added to your spreadsheet.
The blank row is in Row 5. This means the blank row was added immediately above the row containing the mouse.
Now you know where the blank row will go....it depends on the mouse.
Inserting columns is a lot like inserting rows. It will depend on the location of the mouse too. Observe the location of the mouse when a column is inserted in this example.
The
mouse is located in Cell E5 when the Insert Columns
action is taken.
The results are probably what you expected...
The blank column is now the new Column E. In other words, the insert took place to the left of the column containing the mouse.
This process of inserting a row can be very handy when you keep a list of names alphabetically down a column and a new person has to be added!
Your heart should be crying out for the deleting of a row or column to be just as simple. It is almost as easy. Let's look at deleting a row first.
Obviously, you have to tell Excel which row to be deleted. You do this by clicking on the number of the row in the left side of the spreadsheet. One click will select the row.
When you click on a row number, the entire row will be highlighted indicating that what you are about to do will be done to all cells in that row.
Note the string of letters from a to j and the particular letter in row 5.
You are now ready to delete this row.
Click on Edit + Delete from the Menu.
Slide your mouse down until you have hightlighted the Delete option.
When Delete is hightlighted, click your mouse to delete the selected row.
The results are shown below. Notice the absence of the letter e that was on row 5. It is gone because all of the contents of row 5 have been deleted. Also note that row 6 containing the f seems to "move up" to replace the deleted row.
You should make a strong distinction between deleting the contents of cells on a row and actually deleting the row. That is, after you selected row 5, hitting the delete key would have deleted the contents of row 5, but left row 5 as blank cells. You delete a row by the Edit + Delete rather than just pressing the Delete key!
Deleting
columns is very similar to deleting rows. First select
the column that needs deleting. You do this by clicking on the letter in
the column heading. Then click on Edit from the Menu.
Slide down the drop-down panel to select Delete.
When you do, the column will be deleted. Note that Column L moves left to fill the "hole" created by deleting column K.
As before, make a distinction between deleting a column and deleting the contents of cells in a column. Depressing the Delete key will create blank cells in the selected column, but the column will still exist. Selecting Edit + Delete will delete the column and the adjacent column will move to fill the space created by the deleted column.
If you had the need to insert/delete several rows or columns, we hope you would expect there would be a better way than inserting/deleting one at a time. There is!
From these two pictures, you will see how to insert/delete 3 rows/columns at one time. The trick is to FIRST select three rows/columns.
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| Select the three rows by clicking on the 4 and dragging down to select row 5 and row 6 too. | Select the three columns by clicking on the B and dragging right to select Column C and Column D |
Once you have selected the three rows or three columns, you would follow the normal process to insert or delete as explored above. When you finish, the three rows or columns will be inserted or deleted depending on which action you take.