Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program which is used for storing the data in tabular format. The program has given all new dimensions to manipulating scientific and business data. Though Word itself has a Table creator tool but has many limitations. In Excel there is no limitation when it comes to entering the data, formatting it, adding rows or columns, deleting rows or columns, or deleting some specific cells without affecting the entire table. Setting the width and height of cells is quick and easy in Excel and the same ease can be observed while formatting them. In this post I will let you know how to insert an entire row or an entire column in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
Excel spreadsheet though gives us huge space to enter the tabled data but it itself has certain limitations to it. These limitations are so extreme that we seldom or never face them; trust me. We can have a maximum of 16384 columns and a maximum of 1048576 rows in any Excel spreadsheet. The reason why I am mentioning these numbers is that by any chance if we have these many rows occupied then we would not be able to insert more rows and if the maximum number of columns are already occupied then we cant add more columns to it. Every column and row has a unique address to it. Rows are referred by numbers (1-1048576) and columns are referred by Alphabets (A – XFD). Every time we insert a new column or a new row all the rows and columns after the point of insertion are shifted one cell towards the end. For example if you have two fields “Name” and “Phone” in columns A and B respectively, and you insert a column in between these two then the “Phone” column will go to the column C, but the total number of columns in the entire spreadsheet will remain the same which is 16384. So basically a new Column or Row doesn’t get inserted but a room for new Row or Column is emptied by shifting other cells towards the end.
Steps to insert a Row
Step1: Scroll the sheet to the place where you want to insert a Row.
Step2: Right click on the Row number which is on the extreme left hand side and select insert.
Steps to insert a Column
Step1: Scroll the sheet to the place where you want to insert a column.
Step2: Right click on the column number and select Insert from the context menu.
Please note that if you have loads of data in your spreadsheet then it might take time as Excel will now change the reference of every shifted cell and if there are any formulas then all will be recalculated. Also do not right click on any cell and then click on Insert as this will insert only one cell and not an entire Row or Column.
