How does one get all numbers in a column to have set spacing instead
of proportional spacing? I remember setting proportional or fixed
back in the days of DOS, and haven't used it since and I'm unable to
find it in Microsofts online help for either Excel or Word (2003).

Try using a fixed width font like Courier or Courier New.

--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"Joe" wrote in message
...
How does one get all numbers in a column to have set spacing instead
of proportional spacing? I remember setting proportional or fixed
back in the days of DOS, and haven't used it since and I'm unable to
find it in Microsofts online help for either Excel or Word (2003).

If I format all the cells the same way (Number with 3 decimal places and a
1000's separator), then all my numbers line up even if I don't use a fixed width
font. (And don't do anything special to the horizontal alignment (I used right
(indent) 0 in format|cells|alignment tab.)

Er, I mean that the decimal points line up. I'm not quite sure what you mean by
numbers lining up.

Joe wrote:

How does one get all numbers in a column to have set spacing instead
of proportional spacing? I remember setting proportional or fixed
back in the days of DOS, and haven't used it since and I'm unable to
find it in Microsofts online help for either Excel or Word (2003).

--

Dave Peterson

What I'm looking at is - in the fonts I'm using, 1's take less space
the 2's so while the decimal points line up,when 3111.98 is above
3222.98, the 3's don't line up one above the other - exactly. As T.
Valko suggested, some fonts are fixed spacing and each character takes
the same amount of space, therefor they would line up in a column.

That being said, most fonts are proportional spacing (meaning where
1's are involved, some numbers don't line up in a column). At one
time in ancient history you could change fonts with proportional
spacing to fixed spacing. I can't see how to do that anymore, but I'm
thinking there must be a way.......


On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 06:35:53 -0500, Dave Peterson
wrote:

If I format all the cells the same way (Number with 3 decimal places and a
1000's separator), then all my numbers line up even if I don't use a fixed width
font. (And don't do anything special to the horizontal alignment (I used right
(indent) 0 in format|cells|alignment tab.)

Er, I mean that the decimal points line up. I'm not quite sure what you mean by
numbers lining up.

Joe wrote:

How does one get all numbers in a column to have set spacing instead
of proportional spacing? I remember setting proportional or fixed
back in the days of DOS, and haven't used it since and I'm unable to
find it in Microsofts online help for either Excel or Word (2003).