Excel is very good at what it does, but its ability to handle text is somewhat limited. Some worksheets in Excel are text-dense, and Excel does provide some tools to accommodate large blocks of text.

By default, Excel normally left-aligns text in a cell. It also places the text at the bottom of the cell. In some cases, you'll want to align your text in the center of a cell, or on the right. Excel provides buttons on the Formatting toolbar to accomplish these common formatting tasks.

Excel also provides a merged-and-centered button for merging a group of cells and centering text in the merged cell group. This button is also found on the Formatting toolbar.

In addition to horizontal alignment options, Excel provides vertical alignment buttons that allow you to align text at the top, in the center or at the bottom of a cell. These buttons are also found on the Formatting toolbar.

Unless you "wrap" text, your text will spill over into adjacent cells, or will be appear to be truncated if data exists in the cells to the right of your text. To wrap text, select the cell or group of cells you want to format, and choose the Wrap Text check box from the formatting dialogue box. Once you wrap text in a cell, check the height of the row to make sure all of your wrapped text is displayed. If it is not, adjusting the row height will display all of the text in the cell.

The Formatting dialogue box will also allow you to rotate your text vertically or at any convenient angle between 0° (horizontal) and 90° (vertical). Once you have selected the text cell you want to re-align, open the Format Cells dialogue box and set the angle of the text, either by typing in the degree of rotation or by clicking and dragging the rotation indicator to the correct angle.

Notes for editors: Claire Blinman is the training manager at Computer Training Solutions in Bristol. For more information visit our website at http://www.computertrainingsolutions.co.uk or call 0800 019 6882

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