Are you still a heavy user of the Windows command prompt? For command line junkies, using a graphical user interface can often increase the length of time necessary to accomplish a particular task. For some of us, the command line was our first experience with a PC and as such, we’ve become quite efficient and comfortable within it’s confines.

One thing you may have noticed after just a few minutes is the inability to resize the command prompt window – at least as you would any other application window.

Specifically, the width is fixed to 80 columns and you are unable to adjust the width to be larger or smaller. No such constraints exist in the vertical direction however.

Unfortunately, many command line tasks can product output that just doesn’t align with the 80 column fixed width layout. Take this traceroute to this website – notice how the readability decreases as the output is forced to word-wrap.

The solution is actually very simple but you first need to know where to look. Right-click on the Command Prompt titlebar and choose Properties.

On the Layout tab locate the Window Size header and adjust the Width from the default of 80 to something more appropriate for your use. Here we’ve adjust this to 135.

Let’s look at the effect of our change by running the traceroute a second time.

The desired result has been exaggerated but does greatly improve readability when set correctly.