Asikul Himel
Excel has a specific row height and column width. So when you enter some text or values that occupy more space than the current size of cells, you’ll notice that it crosses the border of the cells. In such cases, Excel offers some features to adjust the rows and columns to fit the text in the cell. Today, in this article we will demonstrate some methods to make excel cells expand to fit text automatically.
Download Practice Workbook
Download this practice book to exercise the task while you are reading this article.
5 Suitable Ways to Make Excel Cells Expand to Fit Text Automatically
Consider a situation where you are working in a bookshop and you are inputting the Book Names and their Description. But the fixed row and the cell height are not covering the text length so the texts are spilling out. We need to make some adjustments using some Excel features to make cells expand. In this article, we will apply five different methods to do that.
1. Using Double-Click on Mouse to Make Excel Cells Expand to Fit Text Automatically
The quickest method to make Excel cells expand to fit text automatically is using mouse double clicks.
📌 Step 1:
- Move your mouse cursor to the right-edge column header.
- When the mouse icon changes to a double-sided arrow icon, stop moving your mouse.
- Now Double-Click on the icon to fit the text automatically.
📌 Step 2:
- So we can see that cells are adjusted automatically in the Book Names column. Do the same for the Description column.
- And Double-click on the icon to auto-fit your texts.
Read more: How to Autofit in Excel.
2. Make Excel Cells Expand to Fit Text Automatically by Using Keyboard Shortcuts
You can also use keyboard shortcuts to fit text automatically. Follow these easy steps to learn.
📌 Step 1:
- Select the column whose cells you want to expand to fit cells. Now press “Alt+H+O+I” on the keyboard.
- And our cells are expanded automatically.
- Do the same for the next column also.
- Press Alt+H+O+I.
📌 Step 2:
- If you have to fix your column height you can do it using keyboard shortcuts too.
- Select the columns you want to fit text automatically.
- Press “Alt+H+O+A” on the keyboard.
- And our column heights are expanded to fit text automatically.
3. Applying Excel AutoFit Features
Excel has a built-in feature to fit text automatically when your texts are crossing the fixed row or column height and width. The feature is described below.
📌 Step 1:
- In your Home tab, go to the Cells ribbon and select Format. From the available options, click AutoFit Row Height.
- And, there it is.
📌 Step 2:
- Now we will fix our column width. Go to the Cells ribbon again and select Format. From the available option, click on AutoFit Column Width.
- Finally, our cells are expanded to fit text automatically.
4. Using Wrap Text Feature to Fit Text Automatically
📌 Step 1:
- Select the whole dataset. Go to Alignment Ribbon from the Home tab. Then, click on the Wrap Text option.
- The Wrap Text option made the texts of the cells remain within the cell. The cells are now vertically expanded to fit text automatically.
We can also use a shortcut for this wrap text and that is “Alt+ H+W“.
5. Employing Shrink to Fit Option
The last option I can say is using the Shrink to Fit option which you will get5 in the Format Cells window’s Alignment tab.
📌 Step 1:
- The Shrink to Fit option will fill your text within the fixed cell size. To do that, select your whole dataset. Press “Ctrl+1” to open the Format Cells window.
- In the new tab, go to the Alignment tab and check on Shrink to Fit. Click on to continue.
- Our texts are shrunk within the cells.
Things to Remember
⏩ The Shrink to Fit option may not be comfortable for bigger texts. In that case, other methods will do just fine.
⏩ Shrink to fit doesn’t work for cells that have the Wrap Text applied to it.
Conclusion
How to make excel cells expand to fit text automatically is shown in this article. We hope this article proves useful to you. Do comment if you have any questions or queries. Also, visit our website ExcelDemy.
