Help Understanding the Look of my Spread Sheet

[CommMajor101]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

Hi everyone,
I wasn't sure how to title this question. Here's the situation. When I open my Excel spread sheet it shows me columns A - P with dotted lines going vertically after Column F and Column L. I'm not sure what the dotted lines mean. How do I get rid of them so that I only see the columns I need? (I only need to view Columns A - F. Haha, I hope this makes sense. Thanks for any help in advance.

 

[CyberTaz]

The dashed lines indicate where your page breaks presently fall based on the
sheet's current page setup specs. If you look you'll find that there are
even more outside your active viewing area, both horizontal as well as
vertical. They are generated automatically for the entire sheet when you
take any printing-related actions for the first time in that sheet. They
don't print or cause any other problems - in fact, IMHO, it's good to know
where they are so you can tell if your changes will necessitate adjustments
to those specs. For example, if you widen any of your columns A-F you may
find that column F will no longer fit in left of the vertical line.
Likewise, if you make any of those same columns narrower column G may then
fall within the print range.

If they *really* bother you, however, you can go to Excel> Preferences> View
& remove the check for Show Page Breaks. That setting affects only the
currently active sheet(s), so you'll have to change the setting for any &
all sheets in each workbook.

As for getting rid of columns - or rows - you can't. The number of columns
per sheet is fixed & can't be increased or decreased. You can, however, use
the Format> Columns> Hide command in order to not have selected columns
display, but doing so introduces another set of considerations - including
challenges if you ever choose to Insert Columns.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

The dashed lines indicate where your page breaks presently fall based on the
sheet's current page setup specs. If you look you'll find that there are
even more outside your active viewing area, both horizontal as well as
vertical. They are generated automatically for the entire sheet when you
take any printing-related actions for the first time in that sheet. They
don't print or cause any other problems - in fact, IMHO, it's good to know
where they are so you can tell if your changes will necessitate adjustments
to those specs. For example, if you widen any of your columns A-F you may
find that column F will no longer fit in left of the vertical line.
Likewise, if you make any of those same columns narrower column G may then
fall within the print range.

If they *really* bother you, however, you can go to Excel> Preferences> View
& remove the check for Show Page Breaks. That setting affects only the
currently active sheet(s), so you'll have to change the setting for any &
all sheets in each workbook.

As for getting rid of columns - or rows - you can't. The number of columns
per sheet is fixed & can't be increased or decreased. You can, however, use
the Format> Columns> Hide command in order to not have selected columns
display, but doing so introduces another set of considerations - including
challenges if you ever choose to Insert Columns.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

Hi,

....And taking the opposite approach, if you want a better indicator of
where the page breaks lie, use View > Page Layout.

-Jim