Traditional Ways to Adjust Column Widths (Manually) In this example, Excel's default column width isn't wide enough to show all the text in column A.

Click the "Default Width" line in the Cell Size menu. Enter the desired column width in the "Standard column width" field. By default, the field is filled with 8.43.

Change the default width for all columns in a worksheet by clicking the worksheet's tab at the bottom Excel and returning to the menu that displays the formatting options as described previously.

Thereafter from the list of Paste options displayed therein, select the Keep source column widths option. When the default font and font size are used, the maximum width for a column is 255.