How to Wrap Text in Excel (and Fix Tall Rows)

To wrap text in Excel, select the cells and click Home > Wrap Text. Long text then breaks onto extra lines inside the cell instead of spilling into the next column or getting cut off. This guide shows the Windows and Mac steps, how to add a line break exactly where you want one, and how to fix the two classic problems: rows that won't grow and rows that grow far too tall.

How to wrap text in Excel#

Wrap Text keeps text inside its column by splitting it onto several lines. The row gets taller to show every line.

1. Select the cell, the column or the range you want to wrap.
2. On the Home tab, in the Alignment group, click Wrap Text.
3. Click it again to turn wrapping off.

Keyboard options:

The Alt, H, W sequence is not a held-down combination. Press and release Alt, then H, then W. Wrap Text is one of the quick formatting moves a skills test may ask for, alongside bold, borders and number formats. The guide to formatting numbers as currency and percent covers the next step.

How to add a line break inside a cell#

A line break starts a new line at an exact spot, rather than wherever the column edge happens to fall. While typing or editing a cell:

• Windows: press Alt+Enter.
• Mac: press Control+Option+Return.

For example, type Leila Haddad, press Alt+Enter, then type 12 Harbour Road. The cell shows the name on one line and the street on the next. Excel switches Wrap Text on for that cell by itself. If you later turn wrapping off, the break is still there, but the text shows on one line again.

Wrap text vs Shrink to Fit vs overflow#

Excel has three ways to deal with text that is wider than its column. Pick the one that fits the job.

Overflow stops as soon as the next cell has something in it, so the text looks cut off. Numbers never overflow: a number that is too wide shows as #### instead. Shrink to Fit is in Format Cells > Alignment. Use it sparingly, because very small text is hard to read.

Why isn't wrapped text showing all its lines?#

If you turn on Wrap Text and the row stays one line tall, the row height was set by hand earlier. Excel only resizes rows automatically if you have never dragged or typed a height for them.

Fix it by letting Excel AutoFit the row again:

1. Select the row or rows (Shift+Space selects the current row).
2. Choose Home > Format > AutoFit Row Height (Windows keys: Alt, H, O, A).
3. Or double-click the bottom border of the row number.

Two other causes are worth knowing. Merged cells don't AutoFit at all, so a wrapped merged cell needs its row height set manually. And if the column is very wide, the text has room on one line, so nothing wraps until the column is narrower.

How to fix rows that are far too tall#

Very tall rows usually come from one cell with a lot of text, or with many line breaks, in a narrow column. Wrap Text grows the row to fit the longest cell in it.

Try these fixes, in this order:

• Widen the column. Drag the column border to the right, and the row shrinks as the lines get longer.
• Turn off Wrap Text for that column. Select the column and click Wrap Text again. Then AutoFit the row height.
• Remove extra line breaks. Some imported data has breaks in every cell. See the formula section below.
• Set a fixed height. Right-click the row number, choose Row Height and type a value, such as 30. Text that doesn't fit is hidden, but it is still in the cell.

Long text that you never need to read on screen can also go in a comment or note instead.

Line breaks in formulas: CHAR(10)#

In a formula, a line break is CHAR(10). You can join text with a break between the parts, then turn on Wrap Text to see the lines:

=B2&CHAR(10)&C2

With 12 Harbour Road in B2 and Leeds LS1 4AB in C2, the cell shows the street on line one and the city on line two, which is handy for address labels. The guide to combining text in Excel shows more ways to join cells, including TEXTJOIN.

To remove line breaks, replace them with a space:

=SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(10)," ")

CLEAN also removes line breaks, but it deletes them without adding a space, so two words can end up stuck together. On Windows, you can do the same without a formula: open Find and Replace with Ctrl+H, click in Find what and press Ctrl+J (this types an invisible line break), type a space in Replace with, then click Replace All. For finding other characters inside text, see how to find and search text in Excel.

Wrap text and other formatting#

Wrapped headers look best with a little extra help. Align them to the top or centre vertically (Home > Alignment), and add a bottom border to separate the header from the data. The guide on how to add borders in Excel has the shortcuts. If a cell shows your formula as text instead of the result, that is a different problem: read why an Excel formula shows as text.

Practise it#

Formatting sticks when you do it yourself. Try the address-label exercise on this page, then open the More formatting lesson to practise italic, comma style, date formats and resetting cells in a live spreadsheet. Speed up with the formatting shortcuts lesson, where you bold headers and apply currency and percent formats from the keyboard. Each step is checked instantly.