Wrap Text in Excel (Shortcut)

By default, the cells in Excel have a specific row height and column width.

When you enter any text that is longer than what can be displayed completely within the cell, you would notice that the text spills over and extends outside of the cell.

Text overflowing to another cell

This looks ugly and one way to fix this is to wrap the text within the cell, so that the cell height would increase and ensure that all the text fits within the cell instead of overflowing to the adjacent cells.

Excel has an inbuilt wrap text feature, and in this tutorial, I will give you the keyboard shortcut to wrap text in Excel.

Shortcut to Wrap Text in Excel

Below is the keyboard shortcut to Wrap Text in Excel:

ALT + H + W

How to Use the Keyboard Shortcut to Wrap Text in Excel

Below are the steps to use the above keyboard shortcut:

  1. Select the cell or range of cells in which you have the text that you want to wrap within the cell
  2. With the cell selected, use the above keyboard shortcut ALT + H + W (press these keys one after the other)

The above steps would wrap the text so that the content of the cell doesn’t overflow outside of the cell and fits nicely within the cell itself.

Important Things to Know About Wrap Text in Excel

  • When you have a cell that has some text that is overflowing, and you apply wrap text to it, the content would be wrapped and shown as multiple lines in the same cell. This would also lead to an increase in row height so that the text fits completely within the cell (while keeping the column width intact)
  • When you have applied wrap text on a cell and you adjust its column width, the row height would automatically adjust to ensure that this cell content fits within the cell but there is also no extra space below the content of this cell
  • You can also use the above keyboard shortcut to unwrap the text in selected cells.

Alternate Ways to Wrap Text in Excel

If you don’t want to remember another keyboard shortcut and would rather use your mouse to wrap text in excel, here is how to do it:

  1. Select the cell or range of cells in which you want to wrap the text
  2. Click the Home tab
  3. In the Alignment group, click on the ‘Wrap Text’ option

Other Excel shortcuts you may also like:

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I am a huge fan of Microsoft Excel and love sharing my knowledge through articles and tutorials. I work as a business analyst and use Microsoft Excel extensively in my daily tasks. My aim is to help you unleash the full potential of Excel and become a data-slaying wizard yourself.

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