How to make knitting graph paper with Excel

This is a step-by-step tutorial on how to make knitting graph paper with Microsoft Excel. If you find any mistakes, let me know! I'm using Excel 2000.

1. Start Excel. Click on Start (lower left of screen), scroll up to Programs, and click on Excel.

2. At the top, you should see a menu bar with the words:
File Edit View Insert Format Tools Data Window Help
I will refer to this menu bar often!

3. Click on the "Select all" cell. It's to the left of Column A, and above row 1. The whole worksheet will turn shaded.

4. Click on Format, then on Row, then on Height. Change the value to 10, and click ok.

5. Click on Format, then on Column, then on Width, and change the value to 1.2.

6. Next, decide how many rows and stitches per inch. For example, my gauge is 5 stitches and 7 rows per inch. That's the grid I'm going to set up.

7. Look for the Borders button. It won't be labelled - just place your cursor above each button without clicking on it, until the popup tells you you've found Borders. (If you don't see the button for borders, click on View, then Toolbars, and select Drawing)

8. Set the borders button to draw a border around all four sides: Click on the pull-down arrow next to it, and select the option for "Thick Box Border". (a pop-up box will tell you the name of each.)

9. Then, click on cell A1 with your left mouse button and drag over to E1, then down to E7. Release the mouse button. Click on the borders button, and it will draw a border around those cells. You have your first inch grid!

10. Your grid probably won't look square. Go back to steps 3-5 and play with the row height and column width until it looks right to you.

11. If you click on something and it doesn't do what you wanted, you can always UNDO it. Click on Edit, then Undo.

12. Now you can start building your grid. Highlight A1-E7 again, then Edit, then Copy. Click on cell F1, then Edit, then Paste. You should see two grids. Continue with the Copy and Paste until you have 8 squares across.

13. Now, you can do a copy/paste of that whole row -- highlight A1 and drag to highlight that whole first row of grids. Paste in cell A8.

14. Continue until you have 11 rows of grids.

15. Now you need to get it ready to print. Click on File, then Print Preview.

16. Click on Setup. Under the Sheet tab, select the option to print grid lines.

17. Click on the Margins tab. Set the margins to .5". Click on OK.

18. If your chart is bigger than 8 1/2" by 11", you'll need to adjust the size of printing. Click on Setup again. Under the Page tab, select the "Adjust to (number) % normal size". Play with this setting until you get what you want.

19. When it shows the way you want, go ahead and click on Print. You may not be happy with the first effort, but you can always play around with the settings and print again.

20. Once you have it printed, be sure to save your file. Click on File, Save As. Pick a folder, and remember where you put it! Pick a name you'll remember, like KnitGrid.xls.

Enjoy! Remember, you can use this grid to graph out patterns, slopers, intarsia... the sky's the limit. Here's the Salish Sweater chart showing how I imported .jpg pictures to use as guidelines for intarsia.