Quickly Turn a Range on Its Side


September 14, 2021 - by Bill Jelen

Quickly Turn a Range on Its Side

Problem: I have a column that contains 20 department names going down a column. I need to build a worksheet with those names going across row 1.

A list of departments in A1:A7 is selected and copied to the clipboard.
Figure 77. Turn this data sideways.

Strategy: Copy the data. Select a new blank cell. Do a Paste Transpose. Here’s how:


  • 1. Highlight the department names in column A.

  • 2. Ctrl+C to copy the cells to the Clipboard.



  • 3. Move the cell pointer to a blank area of the worksheet. Your paste region can not start in the same cell as your copy region.

  • 4. Open the Paste dropdown. Click the Transpose icon.

Use the Transpose icon in the Paste Drop-down.
Figure 78. Use this icon to turn the pasted data sideways.

Gotcha: The columns you paste to will not automatically resize to fit the data. To fix this problem, you can select the appropriate range (in this case, C1:Z1) and then choose Home, Format, AutoFit Column Width.

Additional Details: You can use Transpose to convert a horizontal row of numbers into a column. In addition, you can use it to turn a rectangular range on its side.


This article is an excerpt from Power Excel With MrExcel

Title photo by Liam Shaw on Unsplash