Excel Column Width

[MathewBosher]

Hello All,

Apologies if this question has already been asked. If so please point me in the appropriate direction.

I have hundreds of spreadsheets where the column widths are being quoted differently depending on whether I open them with Mac Excel 2004 or Mac Excel 2008.

For example, a column width may be quoted by 2004 as 1.62 cm but 2008 says it is 1.94 cm wide.

This difference also manifests itself when printed. The 2008 spreadsheets take up more space on the printed page.

The only physical difference is that I'm running Excel 2004 on an Intel iMac while 2008 runs on a PCC Mini. Both are running Leopard 10.5.2.

Is this a know problem and or am I expected to reformat all the columns in all my spreadsheets if I want to migrate to Excel 2008?

Thanks in advance.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Hello All,

Apologies if this question has already been asked. If so please point me in
the appropriate direction.

I have hundreds of spreadsheets where the column widths are being quoted
differently depending on whether I open them with Mac Excel 2004 or Mac Excel
2008.

For example, a column width may be quoted by 2004 as 1.62 cm but 2008 says it
is 1.94 cm wide.

This difference also manifests itself when printed. The 2008 spreadsheets
take up more space on the printed page.

The only physical difference is that I'm running Excel 2004 on an Intel iMac
while 2008 runs on a PCC Mini. Both are running Leopard 10.5.2.

Is this a know problem and or am I expected to reformat all the columns in
all my spreadsheets if I want to migrate to Excel 2008?

Make sure you're using the same Standard font (Preferences/General).
While the column widths display in ruler units, they're actually set
terms of the number of standard font "zero" characters (before XL04, you
only saw the character metric, not cm or inches).

Size matters as well - even if you're using the same font, using 12-pt
in XL08 and 10-pt in XL04 should give you the widths in the same ratio
(1.94/1.62 = 12/10 = 1.2).