Paging Excel Gurus: Agita with Column Widths...

Are all the columns stretching or just one or two of them?

uh....you can't ask jes about this?

He did. It may have something to do with a kind of custom view. We looked at the freeze panes - the panes were indeed frozen on one version of this spreadsheet but not another. However, unfreezing them did not seem to matter. These are otherwise identical sheets, so far as I can tell, e. g. same font, same font size, nothing like bold, underline or italics going on. And the widths are specified -- I think it's 15.33 or so.

Sometimes there's just a glitch in the particular file. I've struggled with Table of Contents glitches and font changes and indexed paragraph problems so many times it drove me nuts and is why I refuse to buy any of Gates' **** anymore.

So it is a global width setting for all columns?

Is the width of all columns changing or just specific columns?

If just specific columns, is there a difference in the formating of the columns, i.e., as currency and others as dates and others as formulas?

Is there

i think all columns get stretched at one time, but the overall width of the spreadsheet stays the same --
so it sort of stretches from both sides, if that makes any sense.

it's happened twice, so i'm thinking it's something co-worker is accidentally doing to the files.

these are schedules which we link into our cad program as drawings, so the column widths have to stay the same to comply with the cad header.

it's never happened to me before, but i'm the one who has to humpty-dumpty it back together...

well, if you don't know, who could?

coitanely not I

Thank you for your confidence but God knows I dunno lots 'bout the program. It is one wacky mystery.

I dunno either. just throwing a few things out there.

Is protection on for a particular sheet?

autofit selection?

repeat column width (Ctrl Y)

merged cells?

ctrl tild ( ~ ) stretches columns

That might actually be it, as the guy who's done this (I think twice) claimed it happened when he hit ctrl-tab, which is used to toggle along the tabs. I 'spect he could've hit the tilde instead. Hmm.

My account is in the mail

bingo!

i tested it just to be sure.
once the columns get stretched, a 2nd CTRL - ~ puts 'em back to the way they were.

co-worker has been notified, and i wrote down the correct column widths -- just in case he gets careless again...