I was helping a teacher make math pages for her class math assessments this summer. I was trying to draw lines using word and was successful with it, but found it difficult to get the lines exact! I was talking to my daughter who uses Excel all the time and she assured me, I was going about it in a more difficult way than I needed to.
Open Excel.
You want to select a group of cells. I did this by highlighting all the columns from A to Z. When they were selected, they will be a different color, put your mouse on the line between any two columns. You can drag that column line until it is about 3. When you release the mouse, you will see that all of the columns that you selected are now exactly the same size.
Open the Toolbar that is drawing. Go to View, select Toolbars and then select Drawing. You can make a line with arrows on both end. Put in your gridlines and even change a tool to make lines a different color.
This is a new use for me using Excel. I made this graphic by removing the gridlines before I went and printed the picture.
I will say that I should have known this before I struggled with the drawing. Having the gridlines really does make a difference in being able to be exact about the number line.
