Aligning text is the perfect way to control how values are displayed on your spreadsheets. Excel offers an array of alignment options that are quite easy to work with. These help you control where content is placed within cells. Let’s learn how to align text in Microsoft Excel.
How to Align Text in Excel
Fundamentally, Excel offers six alignment tools to control content placement in cells. These operate on both the horizontal and vertical axes. For most cells, only horizontal alignment is necessary. Vertical alignments become necessary when you’ve merged cells within a column or wrapped the text.
To align text in Excel, begin by selecting a cell containing any values. This can be numbers, text, and more. Cell alignment works with any and every type of content that you can add to Excel spreadsheets.
Then, go to the Home tab and click on it. The Home tab is on Excel’s ribbon, the list of menus found at the top of your screen.
The Alignment group sits immediately to the right of the Font section. In the center, you’ll see three options: Align Left, Center Text, and Align Right. Click on any of these options, and your text will format accordingly.
Above these options, you’ll see the vertical alignment controls. These are Top Align, Middle Align, and Bottom Align. Again, these will produce visible changes only if you have cells taller than the default 16 pixels. If you do, simply click on any of them, and you’ll see your values shift along the vertical axis.
Of course, you can also combine alignments: for example, you can use Middle Align and Align Right to place values in the center right of a given cell.
As you can see, it’s easy to align text in Microsoft Excel to better control the look and feel of your spreadsheets.