How to make Excel cell real "Square" in size

[mrchonginhk]

Hello I wish to use Excel to draw some maps.

However, I found the width and height of Excel does not make sense at all.

For example, default Width is 8.38 while height is 14.25
But the width of the cells on screen and print out is much longer than the height in length.

How to make all cells in the whole spreadsheet real squares ?

I tried changing width and height to the same number but it does not work....

Pls help...

 

[Joe4]

I would just recommend playing around with the Row Heights and Column Widths until you get it to look the way you want.

 

[mrchonginhk]

Do you mean visually ?

But I depend on accuracy to certain extend to make sure the output is not skewed...

seems no way to do it.....gosh...

 

[Joe4]

I assumed that you were going for a "visual" effect.

If complete accuracy is essential, I would probably recommend using something other than Excel for map creation. I'm sure that there must be map creation software that can be found on the market/internet that would probably serve you needs better.

I can't imagine how you would begin to draw a map in Excel anyway, as map lines are rarely all horizontal and vertical...

 

[mrchonginhk]

I know some other like Visio may help but Excel is all what I get.

So there is no way to make Excel cells real square ?

 

[pwalsh10]

why dont you just go to the forms toolbar, and draw in some squares?

 

[GlennUK]

I know some other like Visio may help but Excel is all what I get.

So there is no way to make Excel cells real square ?

Row height and column width are in different units ( as you have found out ). If you set the Row height and column width in VBA for the area you want, then they will look square ( in VBA both items are set in the same unit ).

 

[mrchonginhk]

So what exactly are the different measurement Ms has used ?

I tried converting one of them into inch it becomes a near square but still is not a perfect square...

 

[Tom Urtis]

Row height is set in points, and one point is 1/72 of an inch. So, setting a row height of 72 would print out to a meaurable height of one inch. That's the easy part.

The hard part is column width, because that depends on the font size and type you have formatted for that cell. Column width is set by character widths.

You can come close but maybe never get it exactly right for the column width to be one inch. Look at Application.CentimetersToPoints (one point being .035 centimeters) and multiply that by the average of characters for your font.

The following macro sets a cell at 1 inch tall by 1 inch wide. It is not perfect, using D4 as the target cell, but it comes close. Tweaking it from here might be more trouble than it is worth, so how much further you take it from here is up to you.


Sub Test1()
With Range("D4")
Dim ColWidth As Integer
ColWidth = 100
.ColumnWidth = 1
Do While Abs(72 - .Width) <= ColWidth
ColWidth = 72 - .Width
.ColumnWidth = .ColumnWidth + 0.1
Loop
.RowHeight = 72
End With
End Sub




This link is code for an on-screen ruler, written by Colo:
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA016119/excel/ruler.txt

 

[Gary Drumm]

Perhaps you could use the Windows MSPaint program to create the maps, then cut / copy / paste them into Excel? It's already in your computer, under Accessories.

Maybe you don't even have to use Excel.

MSPaint can do gridlines, and you can size things fairly easily, and it is more user friendly with drawing tools, etc.

You might do a Google search for Freeware for making maps also.

Gary

Gary