Setting the Window Size and Position

To change the screen position where a newly launched Command Prompt window appears, open the window's properties dialog box and click the Layout tab.

The dialog box maintains two different sizes-the screen buffer size and the window size. The width for both sizes is specified in columns (characters); the height is specified in rows (text lines).

The screen buffer settings control the size of the "virtual screen," which is the maximum extent of the screen. Standard screen sizes are 80 by 25, 80 by 43, or 80 by 50, but you can set your Command Prompt session to any size you want. (Some programs that you launch from a Command Prompt session, however, might work correctly only with standard screen sizes. In such cases, Windows automatically adjusts the screen buffer size to the closest size that the program understands.)

The window size settings control the size of the Command Prompt window on your screen. In most cases, you'll want it to be the same size as the screen buffer. But if your screen is crowded, you can reduce the window size. If you do, scroll bars are added so that you can scroll to different parts of the virtual screen. The window size settings cannot be larger than the screen buffer size settings.

Because you size a window by specifying how many rows and columns of characters it should have, the size of those characters also affects the amount of space the window occupies on your display. For information about changing the character size, see "Selecting a Font" nest section.