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Knowing how to wrap text in Excel is important so that your spreadsheet doesn’t get any wider than it needs to be. The wrap text function in Excel lets you break text into multiple lines, therefore increasing the length of your cell.
How to put multiple lines in Excel cells
There are two ways to word wrap in Excel: you can format your cell so it wraps automatically when the edge of the cell is reached, or you can use a manual line break to split it at your choosing.
We’re going to show you both methods today so that you can use whatever best suits your scenario. Let’s start:
How to Wrap Text in Excel Automatically
The cells in Excel spreadsheets don’t typically text wrap by default. Instead, you’ll have to enable Excel word wrap for the text. How do you wrap text in Excel? By following the steps below:
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How to make the column wider to fit your text
If you just want your text to fit inside your column, you don’t need to line wrap. Instead, you can just double-click the separator of its column to expand its cell to fit.
- Your text will fit snugly inside its cell
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How to wrap text in Excel
If you want to wrap text in the selected cell instead, just press “Wrap Text” under the alignment heading of your ribbon.
You can alternatively press the shortcut to wrap text in Excel, which is Alt + H + W.
- Adjust the place your Excel word wrap starts by dragging the column seperator
If you want your text to wrap at a different word, just click and drag its column separator until it fits how you want.
- Remove any excess space by double-clicking its row separator
- The cell height will automatically adjust to fit the text
- How to change the alignment of wrapped text
By default, wrapped text is aligned to the bottom of its cell. If you don’t want it this way, you can select the cell and press the align to top button under the “Alignment” heading/button.
- Your text will stick to the top instead
Text wrapping in Excel can also be performed manually. By adding an Excel line break, you’re able to choose exactly where your text will split and save yourself a lot of fiddling around afterward. Here’s how to add a line break in Excel in a few seconds:
- Double-click cell, place your cursor where you want to split, and press Alt + Enter
- Excel will split your text on to two lines at wherever the cursor was placed
You can do this multiple times if you want the text to span across several lines.
Extra: How to Combine Text Cells in Excel with Concatenate
Now that you know how text wrapping in Excel works, you may be wondering whether you can combine multiple cells into one. The answer is yes. Just follow our how to combine text cells in Excel tutorial to find out how.
Extra: How to Lock Cells in Excel to Prevent Editing
Now that you’ve got your cells looking all pretty, consider learning how to lock cells so that you accidentally undo your hard work.
