Wrap the text in excel

Microsoft Excel can wrap text so it appears on multiple lines in a cell. You can format the cell so the text wraps automatically, or enter a manual line break.

Wrap text automatically

1. In a worksheet, select the cells that you want to format.

2. On the Home tab, in the Alignment group, click Wrap Text. (On Excel for desktop, you can also select the cell, and then press Alt + H + W.)

   

   Notes: 

   • Data in the cell wraps to fit the column width, so if you change the column width, data wrapping adjusts automatically.

   • If all wrapped text is not visible, it may be because the row is set to a specific height or that the text is in a range of cells that has been merged.

Adjust the row height to make all wrapped text visible

1. Select the cell or range for which you want to adjust the row height.

2. On the Home tab, in the Cells group, click Format.

3. Under Cell Size, do one of the following:

   • To automatically adjust the row height, click AutoFit Row Height.

   • To specify a row height, click Row Height, and then type the row height that you want in the Row height box.

     Tip: You can also drag the bottom border of the row to the height that shows all wrapped text.

Enter a line break

To start a new line of text at any specific point in a cell:

1. Double-click the cell in which you want to enter a line break.

   Tip: You can also select the cell, and then press F2.

2. In the cell, click the location where you want to break the line, and press Alt + Enter.

Need more help?

You can always ask an expert in the Excel Tech Community or get support in the Answers community.

When you enter a text string in Excel which exceeds the width of the cell, you can see the text overflowing to the adjacent cell(s).

Below is an example where I have some address in column A and these address overflow to the adjacent cells as well.

And in case you have some text in the adjacent cell, the otherwise overflowing text would disappear and you will only see the text that can fit the cell column width.

In both cases, it doesn’t look good and you may want to wrap the text so that the text remains within a cell and not spill over to others.

This can be done using the wrap text feature in Excel.

In this tutorial, I will show you various ways of wrapping text in Excel (including doing it automatically with a single click, using a formula and doing it manually)

So let’s get started!

Wrap text with a Click

Since this is something you may need to do quite often, there is easy access to quickly wrap the text with a click on a button.

Suppose you have the dataset as shown below where you want to wrap text in column A.

Below are the steps to do this:

1. Select the entire dataset (column A in this example)
2. Click the Home Tab
3. In the Alignment group, click on the ‘Wrap text’ button.

That’s It!

All it takes it two-click to quickly wrap the text.

You will get the final result as shown below.

You can further bring down the effort from two to one-click by adding the Wrap text option to the Quick Access Toolbar. To do this. right-click on the Wrap text option and click on ‘Add to Quick Access Toolbar’

This adds an icon to the QAT and when you want to wrap text in any cell, just select it and click this icon in the QAT.

Wrap text with a Keyboard Shortcut

If you’re like me, leaving the keyboard and using a mouse to click even a single button could feel like a waste of time.

Good news is that you can use the below keyboard shortcut to quickly wrap text in all the selected cells.

ALT + H + W (ALY key followed by the H and W keys)

Wrap text with the Format Dialog box

This is my least preferred method, but there is a reason I am including this one in this tutorial (as it can be useful in one specific scenario).

Below are the steps to wrap the text using the Format dialog box:

1. Select the cells for which you want to apply the wrap text formatting
2. Click the Home tab
3. In the Alignment group, click on the Alignment Setting dialog box launcher (it’s a small ’tilted arrow in a box’ icon at the bottom right of the group).
4. In the ‘Format Cells’ dialog box that opens, select ‘Alignment’ tab (if not selected already)
5. Select the Wrap text option
6. Click OK.

The above steps would wrap the text in the selected cells.

Now if you’re thinking why to use this twisted long method when you can use a keyboard shortcut or a single click on the ‘Wrap Text’ button in the ribbon.

In most cases, you should not be using this method, but it can be useful when you want to change a couple of formatting settings. Since the Format Dialog box gives you access to all the formatting options, this may end up saving you some time.

NOTE: You can also use the keyboard shortcut Control + 1 to open the ‘Format Cells’ dialog box.

How Does Excel Decide How Much text to Wrap

When you use the above method, Excel uses the column width to decide how many lines you get after wrapping.

Doing this makes sure that anything that you have in the cell is confined within the cell itself and doesn’t overflow.

In case you change the column width, the text will also adjust to ensure it fits the column width automatically.

Inserting Line Break (Manually, Using Formula, or Find and Replace)

When you apply ‘Wrap Text’ to any cell, Excel determines the line breaks based on the width of the column.

So if there is text which can fit in the existing column width, it will not be wrapped, but in case it can not, Excel will insert the line breaks by first fitting the content in the first line and then moving the rest to the second line (and so on).

By entering a line break manually, you force Excel to move the text to the next line (in the same cell) right after the line break is inserted.

To enter the line break manually, follow the below steps:

• Double-click on the cell in which you want to insert the line break (or press F2). This will get you into the edit mode in the cell
• Place the cursor where you want the line break.
• Use the keyboard shortcut – ALT + ENTER (hold the ALT key and then press Enter).

Note: For this to work, you need to have Wrap Text enabled on the cell. If Wrap Text is not enabled, you will see all the text in one single line, even if you have inserted the line break.

You can also use a CHAR formula to insert a line break (as well as a cool Find and Replace trick to replace any character with a line break).

Both of these methods are covered in this short tutorial on inserting line breaks in Excel.

And in case you want to remove line breaks from cells in Excel, here is a detailed tutorial about it.

Handling Wrapping Too Much Text

Sometimes you may have a lot of text in a cell and when you wrap the text, it may end up making your row height large.

Something as shown below (the text is taken for bookbrowse.com):

In such a case, you may want to adjust the row height and make it consistent. The downside of this is that not all the text in the cell will be visible, but it makes your worksheet a lot more usable.

Below are the steps to set the row height of the cells:

1. Select the cells for which you want to change the row height
2. Click the ‘Home’ tab
3. In the Cells group, click on the ‘Format’ option
4. Click on Row Height
5. In the ‘Row Height’ dialog box, enter the value. I am using the value 40 in this example.
6. Click OK

The above steps would change the row height and make it all consistent. In case any of the selected cells have text which can not be fit in a cell with the specified height, it will be cut from the bottom.

Don’t worry, the text would still be in the cell. It just won’t be visible.

Excel Text Wrap Not Working – Possible Solutions

In case you find that the Wrap text option is not working as expected and you still see the text as a single line in the cell (or with some missing text), there could be a few possible reasons:

Wrap Text is not enabled

Since it works as a toggle, quickly check whether it’s enabled or not.

If it’s enabled, you will see that this option is highlighted in the Home tab

Cell height needs to be adjusted

When Wrap Text is applied, it moves the extra lines below the first line in the cell. In case your cell row height is less, you may not see the entire wrapped text.

In that case, you need to adjust the cell height.

You change the row height manually by dragging the bottom edge of the row.

Alternatively, you can use the ‘AutoFit Row Height’. This option is available in the ‘Home’ tab in ‘Format’ options.

To use the AutoFit option, select all the cells that you want to auto-fit and click on the AutoFit Row Height option.

The Column Width is Already Wide enough

And sometimes there is nothing wrong.

When your column width is wide enough, there is no reason for Excel to wrap the text as it already fits the cell in a single line.

In case you still want the text to split into multiple lines (despite having enough column width), you need to insert the line break manually.

Hope you found this tutorial useful.

You may also like the following Excel tutorials:

• How to Find Merged Cells in Excel
• How to Merge Cells in Excel
• Excel Text to Columns
• Insert Bullet Points in Excel
• How to Insert a Check Mark (Tick Mark) Symbol in Excel

A normal Excel sheet has cells that are 8.43 points in width and 15 points in height. This is usually about 64 pixels wide and 20 pixels tall.

If your text data is long, you can increase the cell width to fit the data length.

A better option might be to wrap the text to increase the row height so the data fits in the cell instead!

In this post you’ll learn 3 ways to wrap your text data to fit it inside the cell.

What is Text Wrap?

This means that if text is too long to fit inside its cell, it will automatically adjust to appear on multiple lines within the cell.

The data inside the cell will not change and no line break characters will be inserted. It will only appear to be formatted on multiple lines.

The above example you can see the text inside cell B2 extends well past the width of the cell and spills over cell to the right.

After the cell has had wrap text applied, you can see the row height has been adjusted to fit all the text.

Wrap Text from Ribbon

This is a very common action, so it can be found in the Home tab of the ribbon commands.

Wrap your text.

1. Select the cell or range of cells to which you want to apply the wrap text formatting.
2. Go to the Home tab.
3. Press the Wrap Text command found in the Alignment section.

This will apply the formatting to your cells!

It’s a good idea to adjust the width of your cells to the desired size first as the height of the rows will be adjusted so all the text fits inside the cell.

Wrap Text Keyboard Shortcut

There is no dedicated keyboard shortcut for the wrap text formatting, but you can still use the Alt hotkeys for this.

Select the cells to which you want to apply wrap text then press Alt ➜ H ➜ W.

Certainly a quick and easy way to apply the formatting.

Wrap Text in the Format Cells Dialog Box

The format cells dialog box contains all the formatting options you can apply to a cell in your spreadsheet, including the wrap text option.

You can open this menu with a right click on the cells then choose Format Cells or by using the Ctrl + 1 keyboard shortcut.

Go to the Alignment tab in the menu ➜ Check the Wrap text option in the Text control section ➜ then press the OK button.

This is a great option when you want to apply wrap text and other formatting options at the same time.

Automatically Adjust Row Height to Fit Text

If your row height does not properly adjust to fit all the text and is either too small or too big, then you will need to adjust it.

You can do this manually by clicking and dragging the row but there is an easy option to auto-adjust the height.

Go to the Home tab ➜ select the Format options ➜ then select AutoFit Row Height from the menu. You can also do this by double clicking on the edge of the row heading.

The row height will adjust to the exact height needed to show all the text.

Manually Add Line Breaks to Wrap Your Text

The wrap text option will automatically format your text with line breaks based on the available width of the cell.

If you want to choose where the line breaks appear, then you can do this by manually adding line break characters to your text data.

Place the cursor in the text at the point where you want to add a line break then hold the Alt key and press Enter.

This will add a line break character into your text data and the data will appear on multiple lines in the sheet.

Remove Wrap Text

It’s just as easy to remove wrap text formatting as it is to apply it in the first place.

Remove Formatting

Select the cells from which you want to remove the formatting and then perform any of these methods.

• Go to the Home tab and press the Wrap Text command.
• Open the Format Cells menu and uncheck the Wrap text option in the Alignment tab.
• Use the Alt ➜ H ➜ W keyboard shortcut.

The exact same commands used to apply the formatting can be used to remove the formatting as well!

Remove Manually Added Line Breaks

If you’ve manually added line break characters to your text to achieve a wrapping effect, then you will need to remove them using a find and replace method.

Press Ctrl + H to open the find and replace dialog box.

Place the cursor in the Find what section and press Ctrl + J to add a line break character. Leave the Replace with section empty and then press the Replace All button.

This will replace all the line break character that you manually added by nothing thereby removing them.

Conclusions

Wrapping text is a great option for styling your spreadsheets and making them more readable.

It’s great too, because it’s very easy to do.

What’s your favourite method? Let me know in the comments!

How to Wrap Text in Excel – 4 Quick Methods [2023]

How to Wrap Text in Excel – 4 Quick Methods [2023]

By default, a cell in Excel is 15 points tall and 8.43 points wide. The said size is perfect to fit in numbers.

However, you might find yourself in situations where you would want to fit text in a spreadsheet. Particularly, if those are long sentences, it might be difficult for you to neatly fit them into a cell. 🤫

That is where you need the Wrap Text feature of Excel. To learn all about it – continue reading the article it follows.

Download our free sample workbook here to tag along with the guide.

What is the Wrap Text feature in Excel?

There are two ways how the data in a cell that’s large enough to fit in might appear in Microsoft Excel.

1. The text exceeds the boundaries of a cell, and the adjacent cell is empty. In such a case Excel lets the text string exceed the boundaries of the cell.

2. The text exceeds the boundaries of a cell, and the adjacent cell is not empty. In such a case Excel cuts off the text at the cell boundary.

The Wrap Text feature of Excel is meant to save you from situations like these.

The sentence in the above image is too large to fit in a default-sized cell. To fit it in the cell, you may resort to dragging and dropping the column and the row.

But what if you have many such cells in Excel with texts of varying lengths?

You don’t waste a whole evening resizing each column and row to perfectly fit the text in each. To do this in one go, Excel offers the Wrap Text feature.

Where hitting a single button would align it all for you!

How to wrap text in Excel? There are four quick ways how you can wrap text automatically and manually in Microsoft Excel.

It’s time we see them one by one.

1) Wrap Text from the Ribbon

Excel Ribbon offers a ready button to wrap text in Excel.

Take the cells in the image below.

1. Select the cell/cells where you want the Wrap Text formatting applied.

This will be the cell that contains the text.

2. Go to Home Tab > Alignment Group > Click Wrap Text

Wrapping text in Excel is a piece of cake!😀

2) Wrap Text using Hotkeys

Sometimes, you might be working in the ‘keyboard mode’ and simply don’t want to switch to a mouse or a joystick.

That’s alright. You can still wrap text automatically in Excel using hotkeys.

1. Select the cell/cells where you want the Wrap Text formatting applied.

Press Alt. This will activate the hotkey buttons on the Ribbon.

2. Next press ‘H’ to go to the Home Tab.

3. Press ‘W’ for Wrap Text.

3) Wrap Text from the Format Cells Dialog Box

Another way to wrap text automatically in Excel is through the Format Cell Dialog box.

1. Select the cell/cells where you want the Wrap Text formatting applied.

2. Go to Home Tab > Alignment Group > Click the arrow button to the bottom right

Here’s a keyboard shortcut for you! Hit ‘Ctrl + 1’ to launch the ‘Format Cells’ dialogue box.

Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist

3. From the Format Cells popup menu:

Go to Alignment Tab > Text Control > Wrap Text

All of the methods above automatically adjust the row height/column width to fit in the contents of a cell.

You might also choose to do this manually.

4) Wrap Text manually

There are two ways how you may manually fit the text into a single cell in Excel.

i. By adjusting the rows/columns

1. Select the column header where the text resides.

2. Hover your cursor over the boundary of the header to see a double-headed arrow.

3. Hold it and drag it to change the cell size till you have reached the desired column width.

Or, if you do not want to resize the cell in terms of width but height, you may do the same for rows.

However, if you merely resize the row as above, it won’t work.

To fit the text in the cell, you not only need to resize the row but apply Wrap Text too.

ii. By adding line breaks

Line breaks in cells in Excel are just like ordinary line breaks that you’d add to any text of yours.

You can fit text in a cell in Excel by adding a manual line break.

1. To add a new line in a cell, double click the cell. This will activate the cell for writing to it.

Pro Tip!

Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut of pressing F2 to activate a cell for editing. Or you can edit it from the formula bar. ✌️

2. Take the cursor to the position where the text exceeds the boundaries of the cell.

3. Press Alt + Enter to go to add a line break.

This breaks the line into two to help it fit in the cell.

This is not a very handy way to fit text in a cell in Excel because it leads to distortion every time a slight change is made.

iii. By applying AutoFit to Columns / Rows

Another way to fit text in a cell in Excel could be by applying the AutoFit settings to a cell.

1. Select the subject cell.

2. Go to Home Tab > Cells > Format > Auto Fit Row Height.

This is applicable if you want the height of the cell to be adjusted for fitting the contents.

3. Or Go to Home Tab > Cells > Format > Auto Fit Column Width.

This should help you if you want the width of the cell to be adjusted for fitting the cell contents and not the height.

How to remove Wrap text from Excel?

Unwrapping text in Excel is as easy as it is to wrap text in Excel.

Simply select the cells where you no longer want the wrap text feature applied.

1. Go to Home Tab > Alignment Tab > Click Wrap Text.

2. Or use the hotkeys by pressing Alt + H + W.

3. The Wrap text settings (if already applied) will be removed.

The same steps used to apply the wrap text can be reapplied to remove the wrap text formatting.

Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist

That’s it – Now what?

In the article above, we came across different methods on how to wrap text in Excel. Starting from the Wrap text button on Excel Ribbon, to hotkeys, to Format cells.

Not only these, but we also saw how you can manually adjust the size of a cell to fit its contents.

The Wrap text feature of Excel is going to save your spreadsheet from taking a terrible shape. However, Excel is not only about formatting but manipulating numbers.

The three most used functions of Excel include the VLOOKUP, SUMIF, and IF functions. Click here to sign up for my free 30-minute email course that is designed to teach you these functions (and more!).

Kasper Langmann2023-01-19T12:16:50+00:00