How to Autofit Rows and Columns in Excel

The most common use of autofit is to adjust the width of its columns. The most user-friendly way to do this is through interaction with the column’s label:

1. Click and drag the column divider to manually adjust the cell width
   
   

   

2. OR: Double-click the right-hand cell divider to autofit the column width in Excel
   
   

   

3. Your cell will automatically resize to fit your number or text
   
   

   

   Autofit multiple columns by selecting them and double-click the right-side of one of their borders to autofit
   
   

   You can select multiple columns by clicking and dragging over the column headers if they are next to each other. If they aren’t, you can Ctrl + Click only the columns you’d like to adjust.

   

4. Excel will adjust your selected columns to fit
   
   

   

5. How to autofit all columns in a sheet in Excel
   
   

   You can autofit all columns in your spreadsheet at once by clicking in the top-right corner of your cell labels and double-clicking any right-hand cell border.

   

Though it’s less commonly needed, you can also autofit the height of your cells. This is separate from the text wrapping feature (which we’ll cover below), and is mostly useful when you have larger font sizes:

1. Click and drag the row border downwards or double-click its separator
   
   

   The row will automatically increase its width and height to fit.

   

Lining your cursor up with the cell borders can sometimes be a struggle. In these situations, you can use the format function in the ribbon to autofit cells in Excel instead:

1. Select the cells you want to adjust and press “Cells > Format > AutoFit Row Height” in the “Home” tab of the ribbon
   
   

   

2. Excel will adjust your row heights to fit the tallest content
   
   

   

3.  Select the columns to adjust and click “Autofit Column Width” instead
   
   

   You’ll find this option in “Cells > Format” in the “Home” tab of the ribbon once you have selected your columns.

   

4. Excel will autofit your columns to the content in them
   
   

   

To autofit in Excel even faster, you can use the autofit column width and row height shortcuts. While not the easiest to remember, they do allow you to be quite efficient if you’re doing this a lot.

1. Select the cells to resize and press the shortcut keys
   
   

   To autofit column width, the shortcut is “Alt + H”, followed quickly by “O”, then “I”.

   To autofit row height, replace the “I” at the end with an “A”.