Row height setting problem

[Machinist60]

I have a work sheet 4 columns by 1200+ rows, all text set to upper left of
the cell with wrap. This is to be printed, about 25 pages. Many rows have
blank lines using valuable print space. Auto row height does not remove
these.

How do I remove these blank lines other than manually, a gigantic pain as
this sheet is often sorted and they reappear again.

Help appreciated.

John.

 

[GS]

Machinist60 expressed precisely :

I have a work sheet 4 columns by 1200+ rows, all text set to upper left of
the cell with wrap. This is to be printed, about 25 pages. Many rows have
blank lines using valuable print space. Auto row height does not remove
these.

How do I remove these blank lines other than manually, a gigantic pain as
this sheet is often sorted and they reappear again.

Help appreciated.

John.

What is the purpose of the blank rows? If used for spacing I normally
use row height for that so I have contiguous data with manual page
breaks. The problem with text wrap is that if you do anything to the
cells you lose your row heights to whatever Excel determines they be
after the sheet is updated. Absolute PITA, so if anyone has a solution
I'd be very interested (and grateful)

 

[Jim Cone]

The exact nature of the problem is unclear to me.
When data is sorted, blanks are sorted to the bottom by default and sorting certainly doesn't create
new blank rows.
Could those "blank" rows actually contain something that isn't visible: maybe "".

VBA code to delete blank rows is readily available in these newsgroups/internet.
'---
Jim Cone
Portland, Oregon USA
http://www.contextures.com/excel-sort-addin.html
editorial review of special sort add-in (30 ways to sort)




"Machinist60" <[email protected]>
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[Machinist60]

Thanks for the replies, I guess I did not explain the problem clearly.

It is not that there are rows of blank cells but rather blank lines running
across the bottom of all the cells in some rows. Cells contain varying
amounts of text and in some rows auto height adds an unnecessary blank line
across the bottom of all cells in that row. It is that blank line I wish to
eliminate.
John.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Gord Dibben]

If you format for bottom alignment and wrap text is there a problem with the
blank lines in the cells?

If so.........................

Trailing spaces in those cells??

Try TRIMMING some of the offending cells.

Any change?


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Machinist60]

Thanks Gord,

I did try looking for invisible characters by selecting and deleting
everything beyond the end of text and before. Nothing was highlighted or
deleted, no change. I have even tried re-entering all the text from the
keyboard, no change. The behavior is the same whether the format is text or
general. Altering vertical alignment does not have any effect on the height
of the cell, the blank line is simply split between the top and bottom or
flips to the top. Text size does have an effect, 8, 16, 24 all have the
blank line, other sizes fit properly. Font changes do not seem to have any
effect. In text there seems to be a limit to the number of characters that
can be entered into a cell, if this is exceeded #############.... is
displayed. One thing I notice is that this extra blank line only occurs in
cells where the last line is almost the full width of the cell. Changing
the width of the cell doesn't seem to cause a recalculation of height. It
would seem the auto height calculation over estimates the height needed when
the last line is almost full.

John.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[GS]

AutoHeight is one of those features that just doesn't co-operate unless
everything is right with font size, cell width, and screen resolution.

I use Excel to author instruction manuals (via templates) that contain
text, images, and tables. It was as frustrating as heck to get things
so that the printouts matched what I saw on the sheet (WYSIWYG). Now
that I have that behind me, page layout is only a matter of setting
page breaks how I want them.

Also, I use bottom alignment for paragraph type content and center/top
as appropriate for captions/side notes. Like you, I played with
top/bottom alignment and found bottom to be the most reliable
(results-wise), and RowHeight is a given number of pixels per line of
text with first line having the desired spacing added to offset
appropriately from the previous text.

In summary, you need to figure out for a given screen resolution what
width is required for your cell to display its text as it will
print. Printer margins also come into play and so have to be factored
via lots of print previews until you get it right. Once there, save the
sheet as a template. I keep all such templates in a single workbook and
just copy the one I want to my project file.

HTH

 

[Gord Dibben]

You seem to be entering quite a lot of text into cells.

There is a limit of 32.767 characters in a cell but............there is a limit
to number of characters in a cell that will be visible or can be
printed............1024 characters at standard 10pt font.

Excel has trouble with a text-formatted cell when number of characters is
between 255 and 1024.

The fix for the ######### is to change format to General.

As for the auto-height issue........all over the map with that from the sounds
of it.

I have no answers for the why of it in some cases and not others.


Gord

 

[GS]

Gord Dibben wrote on 7/7/2011 :

There is a limit of 32.767 characters in a cell but............there is a
limit
to number of characters in a cell that will be visible or can be
printed............1024 characters at standard 10pt font.

Excel has trouble with a text-formatted cell when number of characters is
between 255 and 1024.

The fix for the ######### is to change format to General.

Yeah, I use an adjacent cell to the Print_Area to count LEN() of
contents. Since the sheets I use are templates I use CF to flag any
that exceed 255 characters because that's the limit I go for copying.
Non-template sheets may go closer to the 1024 limit if need be. And
yes, I use General format unless the paragraphs/lines are numbered in a
separate cell.