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How to wrap text in Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel may be a productivity app that emphasizes numbers, but it has useful tools for text as well. For instance, that handy spreadsheet app will let you wrap text. And getting it done is a breeze. In this guide, we'll show you how to wrap text in Excel in two ways: Manually and automatically.

Difficulty

Easy

Duration

5 minutes

What You Need

  • A PC

  • Microsoft Excel

How to wrap text in Excel using line breaks

Step 1: Go to the cell where you want to add the line break and double-click on it.

how to wrap text in excel insert line break screenshot 1
screenshot

Step 2: Within that same cell, go to where you want to insert the line break, then click on that area.

Step 3: Then press Alt + Enter on your keyboard. A new line in that cell should immediately appear.

how to wrap text in excel wrapped using an inserted line break
screenshot

How to wrap text in Excel using the Wrap Text formatting button

Step 1: Select the cells where you'd like the text to be wrapped. Then navigate to the Home tab of the ribbon menu at the top of the screen.

how to wrap text in excel automatically screenshot
screenshot

Step 2: Look at the Alignment section of the Home tab and select the Wrap Text button. (The button has the "ab" on the top row and the letter "c" on the bottom row with a blue arrow between them that points toward the "c".)

This should automatically wrap the text in your selected cells.

Step 3: Alternatively: You can use a keyboard shortcut to automatically wrap text in Excel. To do so: Select your desired cells and then press Alt + H + W on your keyboard.

Don't forget to adjust your cell sizes

You may need to adjust the size of these cells to see the newly wrapped text better.

To do so: Mouse over their respective column and row borders until you see a black double arrow symbol. Then click and drag those borders until you've reached your desired cell sizes.

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Anita George
Anita has been a technology reporter since 2013 and currently writes for the Computing section at Digital Trends. She began…
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