Rows & Columns in Excel

[Guest]

Ok I have worked with Excel for quite awhile. I am now in an office that is
strictly a MacIntosh environment and for the most part Excel works the same
but with a few quirks. My main problem is that every time I open a
worksheet, it is giving me all 65,000 rows and I will never use all of them.
I know there is a way to set the worksheet to open with a certain # of
columns and a certain # of rows. If I want more rows, then I can add them.
You can easily insert more columns, but I can't remember or find the step
where you can select how many rows you want in the worksheet.

For example, we do a lot of spreadsheets with name/address information.
Maybe we will type 1000 names - 1000 rows. However the sheet opens with
65000 rows - which I don't need and when we try to change anything in the
file, it tells us there is not enough memory to even do a simple function
(like deleting a row or more) because of the #of rows in the worksheet -
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know there is an easy way to do this, but my memory is drawing a blank and
I can't find the info in the help section.

Thanks,
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Ken Johnson]

Hi s struble,
I too use XL on PC and Mac, but am having trouble understanding your
problem. XL always opens with the same numbers of rows and columns (256
and 65536 respectively). All you can do is hide them, but this won't
fix up the memory problem. My Mac is still only OS9 and I will get an
"out of memory" message, with even a reasonable sized XL file, if the
memory is set at the low level it has when first installed. If this is
the case with your Mac then you have to exit XL, select the XL icon on
your hard drive (not a short cut) then goto get info>memory and
increase the memory. If you're OSX then I'm not sure what the problem
is.

Ken Johnson

 

[Gord Dibben]

I know there is an easy way to do this, but my memory is drawing a blank and

I can't find the info in the help section.

There is no "easy way" to tell Excel how many rows and columns you want in a
worksheet.

Point of fact, each sheet will have 256 columns and 65536 rows.

You cannot change this.

You can hide the rows and columns you don't want to use/see.

Empty rows and columns do not contribute to a memory drain and will not
increase the size of a file.

Go to File>Properties>General. What is the file size in bytes?

You have something else going on that causes the memory drain.

Are all the extra rows and columns truly empty?

Select A1 on a sheet.

Hit CTRL + End.

Where does Excel take you?

If far below and right of your column of names, you can reset the real used
range by deleting rows and columns below and right of your actual used range.

Save the workbook and your used range will shrink to the actual 1000 rows.


Gord Dibben Excel MVP