How to Indent in Microsoft Excel
By default, Excel aligns text rings in a cell to the left and numbers to the right. You also have the option to indent the cell's content if you feel that the numbers or sentences are too near to the cell boundary. In a cell, you may indent to the left or the right.
We'll teach you how to indent in Excel in this little lesson. A button for it is on the ribbon, and a keyboard shortcut is also available (if you are more comfortable with that).
Then let's get going!
1). Using a Keyboard Shortcut to Indent
Let's say you wish to aim the numbers to the right, and you have the data set shown below.
The keyboard shortcut for that is as follows:
- ALT + H + 6 (to indent to the right)
- ALT + H + 5 (to indent to the left)
Select the cells where you wish to apply the indent, then hit these keys consecutively to activate this shortcut (one after the other).
2). Using the Ribbon Options
Excel provides settings on the ribbon where you may indent with a click of a button if you'd rather use the mouse.
The steps to indent using the ribbon choices are as follows:
- Choose the cells to which you wish to add an indentation.
- Click the Home tab
- Click on the indent icons in the Alignment group (based on whether you want to indent left or right)
The entire cell content is indented, as you can see. Therefore, all of the lines in a cell that include multiple lines would be indented.
You may add indent icons to the Quick Access Toolbar if you often need to modify the indentation. Just choose "Add to Quick Access Toolbar" from the context menu when you right-click on the indentation icon.
Fun fact: Excel indents by the same amount as three space characters when you use these settings.
Indenting Individual Lines in the Same Cell
If a cell has many lines, you may wish to indent some of the cells but not the others. Unfortunately, employing the indenting choices described above will prevent you from doing that. The indent options are disabled once you enter edit mode in a cell.
However, a less-than-elegant workaround may be used to do this. This may be accomplished by manually inserting spaces before the lines you wish to add indents. Assume you wish to indent every line after the first one in the dataset, as shown below.
The steps to indent numerous lines in a single cell are as follows:
- Choose the cell.
- Click the cell twice (or press F2 to get into the edit mode)
- Set the cursor to the desired indentation location.
4. Set the cursor where you want the indent to appear.
5. To create the necessary indentation, use the space character.
If you want the indentation to span many lines, you must position the cursor at each line and add the necessary letters for a space. These are a few techniques for indenting text in Excel.
