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Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

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    Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    My production spreadsheet has thousands of unwanted columns and I am unsure as to how they appeared. I want to delete them. I have tried selecting all of them and deleting them, but nothing happens. I have tried go to > blanks, but it freezes because there are so many columns. Any suggestions?

    Also, I tried to copy paste to a new sheet, but the formulas get messed up.

    For a mental picture, the spreadsheet is approx 225 rows by 25 columns.

    Suggestions would be very appreciated! Thanks!

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    Hi

    Can you post a sample worksheet so we can see the layout etc dont post confidentail information


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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    I appreciate the idea, but I am unable to upload the document due to its confidentiality. I understand I could manipulate it and change data, but I would rather not. Any other suggestions I could try?

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    Without an example it is difficult to help you.

    You don't want to show us an dummy example !!

    You speak over:
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    For our understanding, which statement is correct?
    Notice my main language is not English.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    I'm fairly new at the company and don't want to hassle my supervisor about uploading documents online... The spreadsheet is supposed to be approx 225 x 25. Someone in the office accidentally added the thousands of columns. She says she copied a line and pasted it, and somehow the thousands of columns appeared. I tried deleting that one line, but that did not fix it either.

    Moderator's Note: As per Forum Rule #12, don't quote whole posts unless necessary-- it's just clutter...Thanks.
    Last edited by jeffreybrown; 12-05-2012 at 02:08 PM.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    My temporary solution is hiding them.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    Someone in the office accidentally added the thousands of columns.

    At the end of the file?

    Between some data?

    If you consist in not give us more info, we can't help you enough.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    Sorry, in my mind it made sense. The columns are off to the right of the data. So it went from being 225 x 25 to 225 rows x thousands of columns off to the right side of the spreadsheet. The tile of the columns continue as follows AM AN AO AP AQ AR AS...then goes to BA BB BC....and on and on.

    I am pretty certain that you have the whole picture now.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    please attach a simple dummy workbook without your company's data. A simple table. Then, you can implement to the real situation if problems solved.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    I was hoping there would be a simple solution. I am sorry, I am unable to upload any documents. I'll see if I can go ahead and figure this one out.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    I think I know what happened here. She accidentally copied the contents of a cell into entire rows instead of an appropriate selection.

    I'm curious as to how to fix this "cleanly" as well.

    Here's a sample book. You want the EXTRA columns to go away and have the sheet go back to your standard A-Z or whatever without the huge blank space screwing up your horizontal scroll bar, right?

    Extra column sample book.xlsx

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    That is spot on. Yes, I am trying to have it go back to standard and eliminate the hassle of scrolling over too far into the blank columns. Let me know if you can think of anything. I tried a number of common sense type solutions (I used excel in college, but nothing more advanced than that), nothing worked except for hiding them, which is my current fix.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    Only thing I can think of to actually make them go away is selecting the area you want, moving it to a new sheet, and deleting the old sheet, sorry.

    If that isn't a good option for you for whatever reason, hopefully someone else here has another option for you.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    I spoke too soon, found another way.

    Select the extra columns, right-click-> Delete, then immediately save the document, close it and re-open it.

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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    >>> If satisfied with a solution, don't forget to mark threads as "Solved" (Thread Tools->Mark thread as Solved)
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    Re: Delete Thousands of Extra Columns

    Great! The immediate save worked, thanks!

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