Tabular data should be presented with minimal column widths. A few spreadsheets such as Excel 5.0 have a column formatting function that auto-fits column size to the data in each column. Then it is necessary to look at those spreadsheet entries that occupy the maximum width in each column to see if suitable abbreviations can be used to reduce the column width. For example, one spreadsheet I was working on recently contained short given names except for one row, where the name was Johanna Rosina Maria Christina. By abbreviating or omitting a few of these names, the column width could be reduced dramatically for the entire document, which resulted in substantial storage savings and better readability.
Different information is associated with different types of documents.
For this reason it is often the case that document width can be reduced if the fields are tailored to the specific information. The alternative would be to design general formats or even formats for hybrid documents containing several different information categories. For example, in the case of church records, confirmation records require fewer fields than marriage records. Another organizational technique involves the use of subsidiary files. A networked digital library will generally contain both browsable documents and downloadable documents that are not intended to be used online.