| Determining How Text Sits Within Cells In Microsoft Excel |
| Written by David Roberts |
| Thursday, 27 August 2009 06:22 |
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Microsoft Excel is not a word processor, so we don't expect too much of it in terms of text alignment. However, the program contains a surprising number of options for controlling the way in which data is displayed within a cell.
Microsoft Excel is not a word processor, so we don't expect too much of it in terms of text alignment. However, the program contains a surprising number of options for controlling the way in which data is displayed within a cell. If you type text in a cell, your text is aligned on the left; if you type a number, the number is aligned on the right; if you type a date, it is also aligned on the right. To change the horizontal alignment, either select a range of cells or click on a column letter to highlight the entire column then click on one of the alignment icons. Haven chosen one type of horizontal alignment, you can change it in two ways. You can either click on a different form of alignment or click again on the already selected alignment. For example, if your text is centred and you click on the Centre button a second time, this deactivates centre alignment and returns you to the default alignment which, for text, is left. Thus we have, effectively, four types of horizontal alignment: left, centre, right and unspecified (or default), which is the alignment that applies when none of the alignment buttons is highlighted. Microsoft Excel also allows you to specify the vertical alignment of your text. This setting becomes apparent when you increase the height of the cell and there is a definite default; text is normally aligned at the bottom of the cell. This default vertical alignment applies to text, dates and numbers alike. Excel also allows you to specify vertical alignment. This setting normally only becomes apparent when you increase the height of the cell and this time there is a definite default which is that text is aligned at the bottom of the cell. This setting applies to text, dates and numbers alike. Excel also features the ability to change the orientation of text within the cell. This is particularly useful in those situations where your column headings are wider than the data in the cells. To change the vertical orientation of your text, just select the cells in question and then choose the appropriate angle in the Alignment dialogue. The Orientation section of the Alignment tab includes a very useful preview which shows you what your text will look like at a given angle. You can set the text angle either by entering a figure or by clicking on the arrows to increase or decrease the angle one degree at a time. When you change the angle of text in this way, the height of the cell increases automatically to accommodate the rotated text. You may also occasionally want to increase the height of cells to enable you to display several lines of text. By default, Excel will only display text on one line, regardless of the height of the cell. To get text to wrap within the cell, click on the Wrap Text button in the Alignment group of the Home Tab of the Excel ribbon. |