The tutor explains how, on Excel, to make a grid useful for displaying a graph.

In these days of software availability, one would expect making squares on a page to be obvious. Here’s the easiest way I know:

• In Excel, in the Cells cluster (Home menu), click Format→Column Width. A diaologue box comes up in which you can enter the column width you want. In my case, the default column width is 8.43; I change it to 2.2, then the cell looks square.

Now, to copy the square shape to a range of other cells:

• Select the square cell, right click it, then click Copy. Next, select a row of cells you want to become the square shape. Right click, then click Paste Special→Column widths, then OK. Hopefully you’ll see the associated cells are now square.

Once you have a spacious region of square cells, you can capture it as an image:

1. Select the region of cells, right click it, then click Copy.
2. Open Paint, then click Paste.
3. Save the image (I use .png format).

I’ll be talking more about Excel, Paint, and other software in future posts:)

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.