Autofit Row Height in Excel

Excel Autofit Row Height (Table of Contents)

• What is Excel AutoFit Row Height?
• Examples of AutoFit Row Height in Excel

Introduction to Autofit Row Height

All of us are aware that by default, all the rows in Excel are set to some unique height, which is 15 points that equals 20 pixels. However, we can change the row height as per our requirement and also be autofitted to apply the height of one row to all other rows. This is something that Excel has as an added benefit and, most of the times, work in the favor of users like us. We can change the row height using different techniques in Excel. You can use a mouse to change the row height, or you can change it using Format, which is placed within Cells Group under the Home tab, or you can use AutoFit Row Height option, or may be Wrap Text can come in helping you change the row height. However, within all these variety of options, Autofit Row Height has beauty of it’s own.

What is Excel AutoFit Row Height?

Well, we all know that row height is dependent on font size. The way you decrease or increase font size for a row changes its height accordingly (directly proportional to font size). There are times when you copy the data from a different source and paste it with source formatting, which causes the text to be clipped under the row as shown below:

If there are few lines, you can adjust the row height manually with the help of different options which we already have discussed in the introduction part of this article. However, think of a situation where you have huge data possibly spread across rows numbered in millions. It will be difficult to manually change the row height in that case. Therefore, we have AutoFit Row Height utility in Excel that allows the row to expand automatically depending on the font size of the largest value in the row.

Examples of AutoFit Row Height in Excel

Let’s discuss the examples of AutoFit Row Height in excel.

Example #1 – How to Change Row Height?

First thing that we’ll look into in this article is how to change the row height for a specific group of cells. You can change row height by simply dragging the row border upwards or downwards to increase or decrease height respectively. Once the row height is changed, you can use the Format Painter tool from Excel to apply the same formatting across different rows. Suppose we have data as shown below. This data specifies the Employee Names and the Monthly Income for the same:

Step 1: I will try to change the height of the second row and set it for 21 points. Put your mouse cursor to the end of the second-row border and drag it down until the height becomes 21 points. You’ll see the height values while you drag the border down.

Now, we would like to apply the same row height for other cells of this Excel book. This is an easy task with the help of Format Painter utility in Excel.

Step 2: Select the entire second row for which we just have changed the row height to 21 points and click on the Format Painter option within the Clipboard group under the Home tab.

Step 3: Use Format Painter brush to apply the copied format to all other rows where you wish the row height to be the same as of the first row.

You can see all the rows (which has data; spreading across A2:B11) are of now same height as that of 21 points. This how we can change the row heights to the one as of  our needs.

Example #2 – AutoFit Row Height in Excel

We will now see how to use Excel’s AutoFit Row Height utility to fit the row height to the best fit automatically. As discussed earlier, this utility is based on the size of text present in a particular row. There are two ways of auto-adjusting the row height in Excel.

Method#1 – Auto Adjust Row Height in Excel

Step 1:  Select all the rows for which you wanted to autofit the row height based on the text size within cells. In this case, I will select all rows spread across the second to the eleventh row.

Make sure you select the entire row and not only the cells where data is present. If done so, you’ll not be able to autofit the row height.

Step 2: Now, go to any of the row border and place your mouse courser there. You’ll see a drag down sign as soon as you place the cursor on the row border.

Step 3: Placed cursor on the last row boundary, double click the row border and you’ll see row heights adjusted to the text size throughout second to the eleventh row.

Method #2 – Auto Adjust the Row Height in Excel

Let’s see one other method which allows us to auto adjust the row height in Excel. Follow the steps below:

Step 1: Select all the rows for which you want to change the row height.

Step 2: Click on the Home tab, navigate towards the Cells group within which you can see Format dropdown as shown below:

Step 3: Click on the Format dropdown under the Cells group, and you can see the AutoFit Row Height option. Click on it.

As soon as you click on the AutoFit Row Height option under Format, you can see the row heights for selected rows are auto-adjusted to the text size within the cells.

This is how, AutoFit Row Height in Excel works. This article ends here. Let’s wrap the things up with some points to be remembered.

Things to Remember

• Default row height in Excel is 15 points that equals to 20 pixels.
• Ideally, the height of rows in Excel is dependent on the font size of the text present in any cell of the row, and it is directly proportional to the row height. Which means a sufficient increase in font size increases the row height and vice-a-versa.
• You can also use Alt + O + R + A as a keyboard shortcut to automatically adjust the row height based on the font size of the text present in any cell of the row/s.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Autofit Row Height in Excel. Here we discuss How to change Autofit Row Height in Excel along with practical examples and downloadable excel template. You can also go through our other suggested articles –

1. Add Rows in Excel Shortcut
2. Excel Rows and Columns
3. Excel Auto Numbering
4. Excel Row Height