Microsoft Excel measures row height in points, the same units used to measure font size. When creating reports this makes it easy to relate the height of rows to the required line spacing. This means that you can increase the line spacing simply by increasing the height of your rows.

The methods used for changing column widths (something that Excel users do far more frequently) can also be used to change row height. Firstly. we can make a selection and. in the Cells section of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon, choose Format then Row Height. If you double Excel's default row height, you will obtain an approximation of double line spacing. If you multiple the default by a factor of 1.5, you will obtain approximately 1 1/2 line spacing, and so forth.

Excel's AutoFit facility can also be used to automatically resize row heights to accommodate the largest font size contained in a given selection. To use the AutoFit command on a single row, position the cursor at the bottom of the row heading and simply double-click. To AutoFit a range of rows, first make a selection and then double-click at the bottom of any of the selected row headings. The same result can also be achieved by using Format - AutoFit Row Height in the Cells section of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon.

In a lot of circumstances, row height can be completely ignored since Excel will automatically adjust the height of rows to accommodate the largest font size found on each row. For example, suppose we insert a header row at the top of a worksheet centred across all the columns containing data. If we then increase the font size of this heading, Excel will automatically increase the row height to accommodate the new font size, pushing the rest of the data down.

Another technique is to increase the row height interactively. This is done by positioning the cursor on the line below the row heading and dragging up or down. As you drag, Excel displays a tooltip containing the row height in points and in pixels.

When you increase the height of a row, the vertical alignment of your data becomes more apparent. By default, Excel aligns text at the bottom of the cell. When you have increased the row height, as you will often do with headings, changing the vertical alignment to centred is usually more visually appealing.

About the Author:
The The writer of this article is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft Excel 2007 Classes at their central London training centre.

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