See Excel’s text and number alignment choices In the Format Cells dialog box, the Wrap Text option will be left unchecked, but the Wrap Text button on the ribbon will appear enabled.The Format Cells dialog can be accessed from Home | Alignment | Orientation, or by right-clicking on selected cells and selecting Format Cells. When a cell contains one word or number only, the Distributed option centers the content.īe aware that with both Justify and Distributed, the text wrapping is automatic. Unlike Justify, Distributed forces all lines to fit the column width, even the last line in wrapped text.Įven cells that contain a small amount of text on one line are expanded to fit the column width. Note that as we saw in the Text Wrap lesson, you may need to double-click the row border to get the row to resize properly.įinally, the Distributed option, like Justify, forces lines to fill the column width and automatically enables text wrapping. In general, the Justify alignment option will look better when used on wider columns. Justify will force all lines except the last line to fill the entire column width.

If fact, you'll see the Wrap Text button highlight automatically when you apply Justify. Justify only affects text in cells that are wrapped. This is not very useful for ordinary content, but it can be used for other effects.įor example, we could enter a hash symbol in a cell, choose the horizontal alignment Fill, and then copy the cell across several columns to create a border element. Selecting a horizontal alignment of Fill will fill a cell with content, repeating the content as necessary. These are the options to fill, justify, and distribute content horizontally in cells.

In this lesson we'll take a look at a few lesser used horizontal alignment options.

What justify text excel