How to write multi lines in one Excel cell?

I want to write multi-lines in one MS Excel cell. But whenever I press the Enter key, the cell editing ends and the cursor moves to next cell. How can I avoid this?

10.7k 5 5 gold badges 41 41 silver badges 63 63 bronze badges asked Nov 22, 2009 at 13:16 Wahid Bitar Wahid Bitar 1,915 7 7 gold badges 21 21 silver badges 22 22 bronze badges

5 Answers 5

What you want to do is to wrap the text in the current cell. You can do this manually by pressing Alt + Enter every time you want a new line

Or, you can set this as the default behaviour by pressing the Wrap Text in the Home tab on the Ribbon. Now, whenever you hit enter, it will automatically wrap the text onto a new line rather than a new cell.

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18.9k 15 15 gold badges 58 58 silver badges 69 69 bronze badges answered Nov 22, 2009 at 13:34 21.3k 20 20 gold badges 85 85 silver badges 124 124 bronze badges

Not quite the same as the OP's question, but you can also wrap existing text by selecting the cells, and selectiing "Format Cells. " and then clicking the "Wrap Text" checkbox.

Commented Feb 28, 2017 at 20:34

For those of you who are software developers and confused by all the talk about "wrap the text" and "why would 'word wrapping' need to be enabled". in Excel. if you want to have a more than one line of text. then "word wrapping" MUST be enabled. You can test this "feature" by inserting a new line via alt + enter then disabling "word wrapping" and see your new line character somehow disappears.

Commented Jun 21, 2018 at 11:34

For those familiar with libreoffice , inserting new lines is done via ctrl + enter and does not require enabling "word wrapping" for a cell.

Commented Jun 21, 2018 at 11:37

"Now, whenever you hit enter, it will automatically wrap the text onto a new line rather than a new cell." . does this still work for anyone with the 2019 version of Excel? When I turn on "Wrap Text" for the cells, pressing Enter is still going down to the next row. I'm working on a spreadsheet where I'm always entering multiple lines of text, so would really love this to work. Holding ALT every time is too cumbersome.

Commented Aug 5, 2019 at 10:37

You have to use Alt + Enter to enter a carriage return inside a cell.

24.5k 28 28 gold badges 104 104 silver badges 134 134 bronze badges answered Nov 22, 2009 at 13:33 10.7k 5 5 gold badges 41 41 silver badges 63 63 bronze badges
  1. Edit a cell and type what you want on the first "row"
  2. Press one of the following, depending on your OS:
    Windows: Alt + Enter Mac: Ctrl + Option + Enter
  3. Type what you want on the next "row" in the same cell
  4. Repeat as needed.

Note that inserting carriage returns with the key combinations above produces different behavior than turning on Wrap Text . In the screenshot below, column A has the carriage returns and column B has Wrap Text turned on. Changing the width of a column with carriage returns doesn't remove them. Changing the width of a column with Wrap Text turned on will change where the lines break.

In-cell line breaks in Excel

answered Nov 13, 2012 at 22:11 Jon Crowell Jon Crowell 2,306 5 5 gold badges 25 25 silver badges 34 34 bronze badges

Use the combination alt + enter

answered Nov 22, 2009 at 13:33 1,145 8 8 silver badges 10 10 bronze badges

Alt + Enter never worked for me. I had to go to Format Cells and make sure that the Number tab was set to Text . That allowed me to see exactly as I had input. My issue could have been Mac specific though.

4,062 15 15 gold badges 36 36 silver badges 47 47 bronze badges answered Aug 26, 2012 at 0:58 71 1 1 silver badge 1 1 bronze badge [Alt]+[Enter] is windows specific, the Mac specific code is in another answer Commented Mar 25, 2017 at 0:44

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