In order to display data neatly within your spread sheet, it is likely that your cells will need to be aligned. Microsoft Excel automatically displays all text on the left-hand side, while numbers automatically align on the far right. This Excel tutorial will allow you to learn Excel easily and we are going to show you how to align the data inside their cells; so that you can create a spread sheet that displays professionally. When you enter numbers or text, it will look like this:
You can clearly see how Excel displays text and numbers in this example. Fortunately, Excel offers a range of options for proper cell alignment. Once you have entered your data, highlight the group of cells that you wish to align. On the Home tab in your Excel Toolbar, you will find a box named Alignment. The most frequently used options are displayed in this box for easy convenience. This is what it looks like:
The above three options will align your data vertically inside the highlighted cells. You can display the information at the top, bottom or in the centre. The lower three options are used for horizontal alignment and will put the data either far left, far right or it can be centred. All you need to do is click on the one you require to instruct Excel to perform it. So if we want to centre our data vertically and horizontally, we simply highlight those cells and click on the central options. This is what it will do:
In this example, both the text and the numbers have been centred. Excel highlights the options that are active, as you can see by the arrows. You can click on any of the options to see which one is best for your particular spread sheet.
Worksheets that do not have cell alignment formatted in them often appear clustered and messy, which is why many of our Excel course students from South Florida have suggested we write an article on cell alignment for you. You can watch our links to Excel training videos for a deeper understanding of what you can do to improve your Excel spread sheets.
