Wrapping text in Excel: How to display the contents of your Excel cells on multiple lines

The easiest way to wrap text in Excel is to use the automatic text wrap feature. You can enable this feature for any cells in your spreadsheet. When you do this, Excel automatically ensures that the formatted cells contents are displayed on multiple lines so that all the data is visible at all times.

It only takes a few steps to have Excel automatically wrap text in cells: Start by left-clicking the cell that you want to format so that text wraps automatically. If you want to select several cells at once, hold down the left mouse button and then move the mouse over the cells you want to select. Alternatively, hold down the [Ctrl] key and click on the individual cells you want to select:

Go to the “Home” tab (if you’re not already there) and click the “Wrap text” button in the “Alignment” section:

In our document, the result looks like this:

Sometimes it’s useful to have Excel insert a line break at a specific point in a cell, for example if you need to arrange certain content elements underneath each other. Microsoft Excel offers a manual line break function for this purpose. To use it, open Edit mode for the cell you want to edit. You can do this in two ways:

• Double-click the cell.
• Click to select the cell and then press the [F2] key or click in the formula bar.

Now place the cursor where you want Excel to insert the line break in the cell and press the keyboard shortcut [Alt] + [Enter]. Hold down the Alt key.

Use this shortcut twice if you want to insert another line break and add an entire paragraph to the Excel cell (although strictly speaking, there are two line breaks):

In many cases Excel may appear to properly wrap text in a cell, but it still doesn’t show the full contents of the cell. This is usually because the author of the document has set the row to a specific height, which causes Excel to hide some of the content despite the text wrap. You can solve this problem in a few steps:

1. Open the “Home” tab.
2. Select the problematic cell by left-clicking or right-clicking it.
3. In the “Cells” group, click “Format.”
4. Choose “AutoFit Row Height.”

You can unmerge a merged cell as follows:

1. Open the “Home” tab.
2. Select the merged cell by left-clicking or right-clicking it.
3. In the “Alignment” group, click the drop-down arrow next to “Merge & Center” and then click “Unmerge Cells.”
4. Alternatively, if you right-clicked to select the merged cells, you can click “Format cells” and then uncheck the “Merge Cells” checkbox.