The default size of a row height in excel is 15 points which is equivalent to 20 Pixels or One-fifth of an inch whilst the default column width is 8.43 points which is equivalent to 60 pixels. This measurements can however be adjusted in line with what you require by auto fitting or manually specifying the new row and width. To autofit rows and columns, please check out our guide here.
Today’s post is all about taking you through how to wrap texts in excel and we have prepared a simple example to make it easier to understand. In our example we have a list of IFRS Standards we plan to study in the next coming weeks and we have included brief details on the IFRS standard name, overview and scope. The challenge now however is that the overview has way more characters than can be contained in the default row height and column width. To remedy this, we would need to wrap texts in order to allow the rows accommodate it.
Step 1: Select the cell you want to wrap and navigate to the Home tab > Alignment group and click on Wrap Text.
Result: Excel automatically adjusts the row height and your text is visible in a single cell without extending to other cells to its right.
Note: If you specify the row height before applying the Wrap Text, excel would not automatically adjust the row height but you can do this by clicking the bottom of the border. For example, we took the same data but we made the last row containing IAS 2 information become the first Standard discussed, but we specified the row height. See the result of applying the wrap text below and how we were able to adjust the row height.
Manual Line Breaks in Excel
Adding a manual line break in a cell means forcing a particular part of your text to start on a new line. We would demonstrate with the same example, but this time around, we would be working on text in our scope column (Column F).
Step 1: Enter into the cell containing the data you want to add the manual line break to
Step 2: Place your cursor on the location you want to apply the line break to
Step 3: Press Alt + Enter to execute the manual line break.
See our visual Guide below on how to go about it.
