How to Make Cells Bigger in Excel?

Excel worksheets are made up of cells with default heights and widths.

In most cases, you will need to adjust the cells to adjust your dataset. In this article, I will show different methods you can use to make the cells bigger.

Zoom-in The Worksheet

One quick way to make the cells appear bigger is by zooming in on the worksheet.

This doesn’t change the actual height/width of the cells; it just zooms in so you see the cells bigger.

Here is how to do this:

1. Select the worksheet where you want to increase the cell size
2. Click the View tab

3. In the Zoom group, click on the Zoom option. This will open the Zoom dialog box.

4. Select one of the options or set your own zoom level by manually entering the value in the custom option.

5. Click OK

The above steps would increase the zoom level of the worksheet, and the cells would appear bigger.

Pro Tip: You can hold the Control key and then use the slider on your mouse to quickly zoom in or zoom out in a worksheet

Note that zoom-in and zoom-out is a worksheet-level setting. So if you change the zoom levels in one of the worksheets, it won’t be applied to all the other remaining worksheets in your workbook.

Increase the Height / Width of the Cells

You can also make the cells bigger by changing the row height and the column width so that it can accommodate more content.

Here are two ways to do it:

Using the Mouse

To change the column width, follow the below steps:

1. Place the cursor at the edge of the column header (the one that contains the column letter value). You should notice the cursor change into this double-pointed arrow as shown below:

2. Click and hold the left mouse key
3. Drag the cursor to the right to increase the column width

If you want to change the column width of multiple columns, select all the columns and then place the cursor on the edge of any of the column headers. Then, drag to increase or decrease the column width.

You can follow the same steps if you want to adjust the row height. Play the closer at the edge of the row number, click and hold the left mouse key, and then drag it up or down to increase or decrease the width.

More Precision with a Dialog box

One drawback of adjusting the cell’s width/height manually is that it may not always be precise.

If you want exact precision when adjusting the cell size, you can use the steps below:

1. Right-click on the column header for which you want to adjust the width.
2. Click on the Column Width option. This will open the Column Width dialog box.

3. Enter the value for the column width

4. Click OK

This is a more precise method as you can ensure that all the columns have the exact same width.

If you want to apply this for multiple columns, select multiple columns and then follow the above steps.

If you want to adjust the row heights, right-click on the row header and then select the row height option. This will open the row height dialog box where you can enter the value.

When you change the width/height of a cell, that change will be applied to the entire column/row. If you only want to change the row height or column width of a specific cell but leave all the other cells as is, you will have to resort to work around such as Merge and Center (covered later in this article)

Also read: How to Freeze Multiple Columns in Excel?

AutoFit Cells to Accommodate Cell Contents

You can use the auto-fit option if your cells already have content and the cell size is not big enough to contain the entire content.

This automatically changes the cell’s width or height in such a way that the entire content of the cell fits inside the cell.

Here are a couple of ways to auto-fit to make cells bigger:

Keyboard Shortcut

Below is the keyboard shortcut to auto-fit the cell’s column width:

ALT + H + O + I

Here is the keyboard shortcut to auto-fit the cell’s row height:

ALT + H + O + A

To use these shortcuts, select the cell that you want to make bigger, then press these keys one after the other.

Option in the Menu

If you’re not a fan of using keyboard shortcuts, you can use the option that is baked into the Excel Ribbon.

Here are the steps to do this:

1. Select the cell (or range of cells)
2. Click the Home tab in the ribbon.
3. In the Cell group, click on the Format icon

4. Click on the Autofit Column Width option or the Autofit Row Height option.

Double-Click Hack

Another quick way to make the cells adjust the width or height so that it perfectly fits the content within it is by using this double click trick.

Here is how to do this:

1. Place the cursor at the edge of the column header that you want to auto-fit.
2. Double-click using the left mouse key

As soon as you double-click on the mouse, the column width expands or contracts so that all the cells have the content within it.

If you want to do the same with the row height, place the cursor at the edge of the row header and then double-click to adjust the row height

Also read: Excel AUTOFIT: Make Rows/Columns Fit the Text Automatically

Wrap Cells

If you want to make the cell bigger because the text is overflowing and spilling over to the adjacent cells, then the wrap text option is what you need.

When you apply the wrap text formatting, it increases the row height, and the extra content is placed as multiple lines in the cell without changing the column width.

Something as shown below:

Here are the steps to apply the wrap text formatting to a cell:

1. Select the cells or range of cells on which you want to apply the wrap text formatting.
2. Click the Home tab
3. Within the Alignment group, click on the Wrap Text icon

Alternatively, you can also use the keyboard shortcut ALT + H + W

Also read: How to Lock Row Height & Column Width in Excel

Increase the Font Size

Sometimes, you may want to make the cell bigger because the text is too small for you.

In such cases, a better solution could be to simply increase the font size.

Here is how to do it:

1. Select the cells or range of cells for which you want to increase the font size
2. Click the Home tab
3. Within the Font group, increase the Font Size value (or click on the drop-down arrow and then select a value from the list).

Pro Tip: Try changing the Font Style for better readability. While Excel uses Calibri (Aptos in M365) as the default font, you can experiment with other fonts and see if it makes it easy on the eyes. Personally, I prefer Verdana and I also slowly warming up to the new Aptos font.

Merge and Center (or Center Across Selection)

All the methods I have covered in this article would be applied to the entire column or row.

For example, when you change the column width, there is no way for you to change the column width of one cell in the column while leaving all the others as is.

But if this is what you want, you can consider using the Merge and Center option.

With Merge and Center, you can merge two or more cells so that it looks like one.

Here is how to do this:

1. Select the cells you want to merge
2. Click the Home tab
3. In the Alignment group, click on the Merge & Center icon.

The above steps would merge the cells.

Caution: Use Merge & Center cautiously, as it can cause some issues with sorting and filtering data. If you want to merge cells in a row, it’s better to use the Center Across Selection option.

In this article, I covered how to make cells bigger in Excel. There are multiple ways to do this such as zoom-in or increasing the cell height or width.

I hope you found this article helpful. If you have any questions or feedback for me would let me know in the comments section.

Other Excel articles you may also like:

• Excel Freeze Panes: Use it to Lock Row/Column Headers
• How to Swap Cells in Excel?
• How to Find Merged Cells in Excel.
• How to Unmerge Cells in Excel
• How to Copy Column Widths in Excel (Shortcut)
• Return to Normal View in Excel