Excel - Insert a Line Break in a Cell
May 11, 2012
When entering text into a cell, sometimes we’d like to insert a line break for better formatting. A line break is like when you’re in Word and you press Enter to create a new line. This can also be called a carriage return. We’ll cover two ways to do this.
- Line breaks in plain text
- Line breaks in cell formulas
One thing is certain, you shouldn’t use two cells for creating the illusion of line breaks.
Adding a Line Break in Plain Text
This one is easy. While you’re editing the text of a cell, you can simply press
Alt+Enter
(or Command+Option+Enter
for Mac) to add a line break as shown
below.
NOTE: This will automatically set Wrap Text ON for cell A1.
Let’s take a look at what happens when you turn Wrap Text OFF:
Notice that in the formula bar the break is kept there, but it is one single
line in cell A1
. This is because Excel needs to format the break and Wrap Text
is the way to do it. The formula bar is immune to show any formatting, but it
will show you the data you have (in this case, some text, then a line break and
some more text after). It’s just another way to show you that you have a break
in the cell, but it’s not formatted to show it that way.
Adding a Line Break in Cell Formulas
To enter a line break in a cell formula, reference the text and concatenate it
with the ampersand (or you can use the CONCATENATE()
function) along with the
function CHAR(10)
to insert the break (CHAR(13)
on Mac). The CHAR()
function takes in an integer and will show a character based on that integer.
Please see
Microsoft’s page on the CHAR() function
for more info. The 10
(13
for Mac) in this case refers to the character
“Line Feed.”
Let’s take B1
and add a formula to combine cells A1
and A2
with a line
break in between them. The formula to use is:
Windows:
=A1&CHAR(10)&A2
Mac:
=A1&CHAR(13)&A2
Notice this time that Excel does not automatically turn on Wrap Text when we enter the line break as a formula. You have to manually turn it on to get the formatting you want.