Excel Formatting(?) Question

October 12, 2012 1:06 PM

There must be a simple solution to this Excel issue I'd like to fix.

I have a spreadsheet with the first three rows used as "titles" for each individual column (A through AV). I would like the first row underneath the "titles" to be row 1, not row 4. Is there any way to do this? Many thanks in advance.

posted by digiFramph to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

For what purpose?. There isn't a way to reorder the row numbers. But perhaps there's a way to accomplish what you want some other way.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:09 PM on October 12, 2012 [1 favorite]

You can make the left-most column your own ID# column. You can even do a formula like A4+1 (where A4=1) to fill in the numbers automatically.
posted by bleep at 1:12 PM on October 12, 2012

This can't be done.*


*You could 'turn off' row and column headers in the Options -> Advanced -> Display Options for this Worksheet. Insert a new column as your first column and, in the row you want as "Number 1," enter = Row() - 3 and copy that all the way down. But I think this would just be confusing.
posted by Jacob G at 1:12 PM on October 12, 2012

You can even do a formula like A4+1 (where A4=1) to fill in the numbers automatically.

This works, though it has the problem that the numbering tends to get messed up if you move rows around, insert or delete rows, etc.

So another way you can do this is to have your own "row number" in column A with a formula like:

=CELL("row",A4)-3

... in cell A4, and then just copy that to all the other cells in Column A. Because it refers to itself rather than the row above, it still works when moved around, or rows around it are added or deleted.
posted by FishBike at 1:20 PM on October 12, 2012 [1 favorite]

Or, yeah, use the row function like Jacob G suggests.
posted by FishBike at 1:21 PM on October 12, 2012

I'll say it again, why do this, and can you imagine trouble shooting formulas?
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:22 PM on October 12, 2012

You don't actually need to fill in the numbers with a formula either.
The reason to do this is so that there is no confusion over how many records you have.
posted by bleep at 1:28 PM on October 12, 2012

Control + Enter will give you a line break within 1 cell. Why not combine all three titles into one cell but size the cell so that they are on their own line?

This is an absolute nightmare for any formulas you plan to use in this sheet.
posted by remthewanderer at 7:31 AM on October 13, 2012