how do I resize multiple colums in sheets?

Question

I thought this was simple , however can find no help on help sheets and no previous mention of this - can someone please just let me know how to resize multiple colums at once ( rather than selecting and resizing each column individually)
I am sure this is simple, just cannot find out how, and right clicking offers no joy, just row height, no column width options.
Thank-you

Matt:King · Accepted Answer

hello cat lady,
 
highlight all the columns you're looking for by dragging across the column letters themeselves, up above the top row of the sheet.  Then grab any column border that's covered in that range and drag to adjust.
 
This should do all the columns at once.
 
Alternatively, after selecting all your columns, you can right click on that selection and choose "resize columns" and specify the number of pixels for the width.  The default is 100 if that helps give you some scale.
 
Hope this helps!
 
Matt

Rupert Wood · Accepted Answer

Highlight the columns you want to change by clicking in the column heading (i.e where the letters are located, A, B, C etc.) of the first column, and dragging across the range to the last column for which you are setting the width. If you have selected correctly the cells in the column heading will turn dark grey. If they go from white to light grey you have not selected correctly and the resize option will not be available.
In any column, hover above the top cell in the column heading
You will see a small down arrow to the right side of the cell
Click on this and a drop down menu appears*
Scroll down to the "Resize column..." option and click
A dialog box appears with width setting options
If you have selected multiple columns, they will all change to the selected width
*The drop down menu also appears on right-click (ctrl-Click Mac) anywhere on the spreadsheet when the header column is correctly highlighted
The above operation also works for resizing rows - but there is no down arrow: you have to use the right-click (ctrl-Click Mac) method to get the drop down menu.
For both rows and columns the manual method of dragging the cell border of any one cell also works - but the highlighting must be correct, as described above.
This works, Marc Ouellette - just discovered it as I also found the frustrating lack of documentation on this in the official help windows

Marc Whitaker · Accepted Answer

Somehow this absolutely does not work on my Chromebook. I followed these instructions as closely as humanly possible. No arrow appears, a right click (two-finger tap on the mouse pad) brings up a subtext menu, but resize is just not on there. Is mine broken?
Edit: I got it to work, but the big problem was I hadn't converted an excel file from a colleague to the preferred sheets format. It seems you simply cannot resize a range of cells from an external format. First convert to Sheets, then resize and reformat. It seems this is highly destructive of data contained in the original excel format. It might just be easier to REMAKE the whole spreadsheet from scratch.  *sigh*

Accepted Answer

Hello cat lady,
After you have selected all your columns, if you point your mouse at the side of one of the columns, instead of clicking and dragging the adjustment - simply double-click (just as you would for a single column) and it will auto-fit the width as needed for each column.
Sadly, I have not found anywhere in any menus to do this without using a double-click of the mouse.  I have tendinitis in my first two fingers and I avoid double-clicking when ever possible and prefer keyboard shortcuts and navigation.
Hope this helps someone!
-Dog man