Suppose you want to enter some data in a Google spreadsheet that includes a long sentence or string. You will notice the text string overflow to the adjacent cells on the right like this:
Wrapping text in Google Sheet’s is a feature that extends the height of each cell by creating new line breaks.
Meaning the sentence or string in the cell will fit the column width, just like in the illustration below:
If you don’t want any cell in the spreadsheet to cut off in a column, or continue past the column width and cut into another cell, then you need to learn how to wrap text in Google Sheets to be able to solve this issue.
We’ll be going through the several ways to wrap text on Google Sheets and the best use cases for each.
We’ll also briefly cover all Text Wrapping formatting options, like Overflow, Wrap, and Clip.
Let’s begin!
Using The Format Menu To Wrap Text In Google Sheets
This is a very straightforward method to wrap text on Google Sheets, and you can use the following steps to get it done.
Step 1: Select the cells, columns, or rows you want to text-wrap.
Step 2: Go to the Format option in the menu, click Text wrapping, and then Wrap on the dropdown.
The texts you’ve selected will be wrapped right away.
How To Use The Toolbar To Wrap Text in Google Sheets
There’s a “Wrap Text” option available on the toolbar in Google Sheets, which makes wrapping text even more straightforward.
So, follow these steps to wrap the text with Toolbar:
Step 1: Highlight the cell, column, or row you wish to text-wrap.
Step 2: Click on the wrap text icon (You’ll see a horizontal arrow between two adjacent parallel vertical lines)
Step 3: A drop-down menu will appear, select the icon in the middle (You’ll see a curved arrow in the middle of two parallel vertical lines)
Your text should now be wrapped within the cell.
how to make text stay in cell in google sheets?
Making texts stay in a cell is based on the width of the columns. When you enable text wrap on Google Sheets, the cell’s content is modified to fit the cell based on the column width of the cell.
So, nothing will happen if your column width is enough to fit all the text in one single line. If not, Google Sheets will allow the text to spill into the next cell if it’s empty.
The Text Wrapping option on Google Sheets works as a toggle, and the three options it provides are Overflow, Wrap, and Clip.
Overflow allows your text to spill into another cell if the next cell is empty. Wrap enables the text to fit the column width and height of the cell so that the cell’s content doesn’t overflow and remains within the same cell.
Google Sheets will automatically fit the content to the adjusted height of the cell when the text is wrapped. That way, your text will split into multiple lines in the same cell.
The third Text Wrapping option is Clip, where your text will be contained to the cell column width, and any content beyond that will not be visible.
The ‘Clip’ option clips the text, so it doesn’t overflow to the following cells or get wrapped. It could be helpful when inputting long URLs or addresses, and you don’t need to have the complete text visible.
How To Text Wrap in Google Sheets Manually (Keyboard Shortcut)
Google Sheets’s inbuilt wrapping functionality works based on column width. But you can also manually format how you want the line to break for each cell.
While this isn’t a very convenient method, especially when dealing with lots of data, sometimes, you still want to choose where the line breaks in your text occur and control the width of your lines.
Use the following steps to manually break lines with the Google Sheets Text wrapping feature:
Step 1: Double-click on the cell you want to insert the line break, or click once and press F2.
Step 2: Press (ALT + Enter) or (Ctrl + Enter) to carry out the line break action.
Inserting line breaking in a cell means that even when you have not applied the text wrapping feature, it would still bring the text after the line break to the next line and make the width of the text in each cell vary.
As you can see above, the text wrapping setting for the whole spreadsheet is still “overflow.” However, the text before and after the line break are only on separate lines in the cells where we used the steps above.
How to Wrap Text in the Google Sheets Mobile App
Here’s how to wrap text on the go with your mobile app:
To wrap text in a single cell, tap the cell you’d like to format or select the letter at the top of the column to text wrap the column as a whole.
- Tap the A Formatting button
- Click the Cell tab and scroll down to toggle the Wrap text button on
Wrapping Text in Google Spreadhseets: FAQ
What Is The Simplest Way To Wrap Text in Google Sheets?
The most straightforward way to warp text is to highlight the applicable cells and click the text wrap icon in the toolbar.
What Is the Shortcut for Wrap Text in Google Sheets?
Highlight the cells or columns you want to text wrap and press either ALT + Enter or Ctrl + Enter.
Why Is My Google Sheets Not Text Wrapping in?
Google Sheets doesn’t automate text wrapping anymore. So you have to toggle between the three Text Wrapping options and select your desired default Text wrap method.
Things to Keep in Mind
Text wrapping makes all your sentences visible, which is excellent. But in some cases, the sentences can look stacked on top of each other, making them much less appealing.
In that case, you can extend the Column Width by clicking the downward-facing arrow beside the letter atop each column and resizing the width.
You’ll find setting an appropriate column width when wrapping text very cool.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!
Other Google Sheets tutorials you may Enjoy As Well.