All versions of Microsoft Excel for the PC and Mac now support the ability to press the keyboard shortcut Alt+Enter to move to the next line. To use this keyboard shortcut, type the text you want in the cell and, when ready to move to the next text line, press and hold down the Alt key, then press the Enter key.
If you want to change the way data appears in a cell, you can rotate the font angle, or change the data alignment.
Align a column, or row
Select a column, or row.
Select Align Left, Center, or Align Right.
Select Top Align, Middle Align, or Bottom Align.
Align cells in a workbook
Click a cell, or press Ctrl + A to select all cells.
Select Align Left, Center, or Align Right.
Select Top Align, Middle Align, or Bottom Align.
Rotate text
Select a cell, row, column, or a range.
Click Orientation, and then select an option.
You can rotate your text up, down, clockwise, or counterclockwise, or align text vertically.
Excel for the web doesn’t have the font orientation option for you to apply vertical text or rotate text in an angle.
If you have the Excel desktop application, you can use it to open your workbook and align or rotate text.
Need more help?
You can always ask an expert in the Excel Tech Community, get support in the Answers community, or suggest a new feature or improvement on Excel User Voice.
See Also
I want to write multi-lines in one MS Excel cell.
But whenever I press the Enter key, the cell editing ends and the cursor moves to next cell. How can I avoid this?
5 Answers
What you want to do is to wrap the text in the current cell. You can do this manually by pressing Alt + Enter every time you want a new line
Or, you can set this as the default behaviour by pressing the Wrap Text in the Home tab on the Ribbon. Now, whenever you hit enter, it will automatically wrap the text onto a new line rather than a new cell.
GaffColumn In Excel
You have to use Alt+Enter to enter a carriage return inside a cell.
soandosExcel Next Line In Cell
- Edit a cell and type what you want on the first 'row'
- Press one of the following, depending on your OS:
Windows:Alt + EnterMac:Ctrl + Option + Enter
- Type what you want on the next 'row' in the same cell
- Repeat as needed.
Note that inserting carriage returns with the key combinations above produces different behavior than turning on Wrap Text. In the screenshot below, column A has the carriage returns and column B has Wrap Text turned on. Changing the width of a column with carriage returns doesn't remove them. Changing the width of a column with Wrap Text turned on will change where the lines break.
Alt + Enter never worked for me. I had to go to Format Cells and make sure that the Number tab was set to Text. That allowed me to see exactly as I had input. My issue could have been Mac specific though.
protected by Community♦Nov 12 '13 at 9:58
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