Excel Tutorial: Rotating and Wrapping Text in Excel

Wrapping text in Excel when lines of text get too long for a single cell is useful as it automatically expands a cell to multiple lines. Excel has a number of sophisticated text handling tools that you would normally only find in a word processing program such as Microsoft Word. As Excel has grown more powerful and easier to use, it has added the ability to manipulate text within worksheet cells. For example, the Wrap Text command allows you to wrap extra-long text within a single cell.

Follow these steps to wrap text in Excel

1. Click cell A27.
2. Choose Wrap Text from the Alignment group on the Home tab.
   Excel enlarges the height of row 27 and wraps the extra-long notation within cell A27.

Rotating text in Excel

Another advanced text editing tool is the ability to rotate text within a cell. This can be useful when a heading is much longer than the data it is describing, or when you’d like to fit more data on a single page.

Follow these steps to rotate text in Excel:

1. Select range B7:D7.
2. Choose Orientation from the Alignment group on the Home tab.
3. Select Angle Counterclockwise.
   Text alignment helps when you need to make more room on a page.
4. Click the Orientation button again and choose Angle Counterclockwise again to turn off the format from range B7:D7.

When you apply formatting to a cell, the format is either On or Off. A format that is applied to the current cell will appear highlighted to indicate that it is on.