Need More Room in a Cell? No Problem!

Happy New Year, All! I hope you are off to a Great Start in 2013!

As everyone know, the focus of Excel is numbers. There are, of course, times when you want to enter Text into cells as well. Sometimes you may even want to Add Another Paragraph (or perhaps just a line break) in a single cell. If you are working in Word, that’s easy – just hit the Enter key.

In Excel, however, hitting Enter will just take you to the next row below. “That is So Bogus!” you say, but take heart, the solution is so easy it will make you Laugh.

Now, there is typically More Than One Way to do just about anything in Excel. I am a big fan of using the keyboard whenever possible, but we will look at a couple of ways to enable a user to accomplish this Simple, but Useful trick. (Come to think of it, some people may describe me in those terms: Simple but Useful – Ha!).

First Technique:
Once you have selected the cell you will be entering the text, simply click the Wrap Text button in the Alignment group of the Home ribbon (Excel 2007 – Excel 2013).

Second (and Coolest!) Technique:
Using just the keyboard, all you need to do is press Alt+Enter to start a new line in the cell in which you are typing or editing. How Cool is That! Go ahead and see if your Excel Guru colleagues know this trick…

Cheers!