Zooming In On Your Worksheet

When you are working with your data, you may want to enlarge what you see on the screen without actually changing the font size used by Excel. For instance, you may have formatted your text so that it uses a small font. (This is often necessary to get all your information on a printout.) When working in the worksheet, however, the font is difficult to read because it is so small.

The solution to this problem is to use the Zoom command to enlarge just what is displayed on the screen. Excel provides two ways primary methods to zoom in on your data. First, if you are using a version of Excel prior to Excel 2007 you can use the Zoom control on the Standard toolbar. This drop-down list provides a way you can easily select any of six predefined zoom settings.

If you want more zooming choices, you should select the Zoom option from the View menu. (In Excel 2007 display the View tab of the ribbon and then click Zoom in the Zoom group.) Excel displays the Zoom dialog box (Click here to see a related figure.) which lists the six selections available from the toolbar, but also a Custom setting which allows you to specify any magnification level you want, between 10% and 400%. When you are done with your selection, just click on OK.