Microsoft® Excel® 2010 Inside Out

Which Data Should Be in Rows, and Which in Columns?

Sometimes the answer is rather obvious, but generally speaking, you’ll want the data that is most abundant to fill rows rather than columns. Consider the readability of your data when you make this decision. For example, a month-oriented worksheet like the one shown in Figure 5-1 can work well with the month labels either across the top or down the left side of the worksheet. But in this case, having the month labels down the side makes it easier to view the worksheet on the screen and makes it easier to fit it on a printed page. The worksheet in Figure 5-1 contains only four columns of detail data, but if your worksheet has more categories of detail data than the number of months, you might ...