Lesson 14

Preview

Inserting and Deleting Columns and Rows

Practice Exercise 5: Inserting and deleting columns using the Ribbon menu and using the mouse.

	A	B	C
1	South Carolina	United States of America	North America
2	Florence County	South Carolina	United States of America
3	Richland County	North Carolina	Canada

Figure 1

STEP 1: Enter the following data into cells A1 through C3 as shown in FIGURE 1.

STEP 2: Move the mouse up to the column A header (mouse symbol is now a downward pointing black arrow) and mouse click the header (FIGURE 2). Column A will be highlighted.

STEP 3A: Move mouse up to Ribbon Cells section and select the Insert Command down arrow (FIGURE 3).

STEP 3B: Select Insert Sheet Columns from the drop-down menu.

STEP 4A: Inserted column is now column A and all other columns have been moved over one column (former Column A is now B, former Column B is now C) (FIGURE 4).

STEP 4B: Select the Undo icon to retrieve Column A

Remember: Excel always inserts a column to the LEFT of the highlighted column.

STEP 5: You can insert columns using the mouse shortcut menu (FIGURE 5). Move the mouse up to the column A header (mouse symbol is now a downward pointing black arrow) and mouse click the header. Column A will be highlighted.

STEP 6A: Right-button mouse click anywhere on the highlighted column. You will see a mouse shortcut menu appear as shown on the right (FIGURE 6).
Notice above the shortcut menu is a small toolbar with formatting controls. This is known as the Mini-toolbar. It appears when you right click the mouse or when you highlight data in a cell. There is a section about it in this guide in Module 3/Section 3.3.1

STEP 6B: Select Insert from the drop-down menu (Since Column A is highlighted, Excel knows it is a column that is to be inserted).

STEP 6C: Inserted column is now column A and all other columns have been moved over one column (former Column A is now B, former Column B is now C, etc. (FIGURE 7).

STEP 7: Move the mouse over to the column A header (mouse symbol is now a downward pointing black arrow) and mouse click the header (FIGURE 8). Column A will be highlighted.

STEP 8A: Move mouse up to Ribbon Cells section and select the Delete Command down arrow (FIGURE 9).

STEP 8B: Select Delete Sheet Columns from the drop-down menu.

STEP 9A: Column A has been deleted and all other columns have been moved over one column (former Column B is now A, Column C is now B, etc) (FIGURE 10).

STEP 9B: Select Undo to retrieve Column A (FIGURE 11).

STEP 10: You can also delete columns using the mouse shortcut menu (FIGURE 12). Move the mouse up to the column A header (mouse symbol is now a downward pointing black arrow) and mouse click the header. Column A will be highlighted.

STEP 11A: Right-button mouse click anywhere on the highlighted column (FIGURE 13). You will see a shortcut menu appear as shown on the right.

STEP 11B: Select Delete from the drop-down menu (Since Column A is highlighted, Excel knows it is a column A that is to be deleted).

STEP 12A: Column A has been deleted and all other columns have been moved over one column (former Column B is now A, former Column C is now B, etc) (FIGURE 14).

STEP 12B: Select Undo to retrieve Column A data (FIGURE 15).

Practice Exercise 6: Inserting and deleting rows using the Ribbon menu and using the mouse.

STEP 1: Move the mouse over to the row 1 header (mouse symbol is now a right pointing black arrow) and mouse click the header. Row 1 will be highlighted (FIGURE 16).

Figure 16

STEP 2A: Move mouse up to Ribbon Cells section and select the Insert Command down arrow (FIGURE 17).

STEP 2B: Select Insert Sheet Rows from the drop-down menu.

STEP 3A: Inserted row is now row 1 and all other rows have been increased one row number; (former row 1 is now 2, former row 2 is now 3, etc) (FIGURE 18).

STEP 3B: Select Undo to delete the inserted row.

STEP 4: You can also insert rows using the mouse shortcut menu. Move the mouse over to the row 1 header (mouse symbol is now a right pointing black arrow) and mouse click the header. Row 1 will be highlighted (FIGURE 19).

STEP 5A: Right-button mouse click anywhere on the highlighted row. You will see a shortcut menu appear as shown on the right (FIGURE 20).

STEP 5B: Select Insert from the drop-down menu (Since row 1 is highlighted, Excel knows it is a row that is to be inserted).

STEP 6: Inserted row is now row 1 and all other rows have increased one row (former row 1 is now 2, former row 2 is now 3, etc) (FIGURE 21).

STEP 7: Move the mouse over to the row 1 header (mouse symbol is now a right pointing black arrow) and mouse click the header. Row 1 will be highlighted (FIGURE 22).

STEP 8A: Move mouse up to Ribbon Cells section and select the Delete down arrow (FIGURE 23).

STEP 8B: Select Delete Sheet Rows from the drop-down menu.

STEP 9: Row 1 has been deleted and all other rows have been decreased one row (former row 2 is now row 1, row 3 is now 2, etc) (FIGURE 24).

STEP 10: You can also delete rows using the mouse shortcut menu. Move the mouse over to the row 1 header (mouse symbol is now a right pointing black arrow) and mouse click the header. Row 1 will be highlighted (FIGURE 25).

STEP 11A: Right-button mouse click anywhere on the highlighted row. You will see a shortcut menu appear as shown in FIGURE 26.

STEP 11B: Select Delete from the drop-down menu (Since row 1 is highlighted, Excel knows it is row 1 that is to be deleted).