How to Centre Text and Numbers

You saw that by clicking inside of a cell it makes it active so that you can make changes. We want to centre all our numbers and the text. Here's the spreadsheet we have:

So we need cells A1, A2, A3 and A4 to be active. In Excel, you can do this by highlighting the cells.

• Place your mouse over cell A1
• Your pointer should now be in the shape of a white cross
• When your pointer changes to the white cross, hold your left mouse button down and drag to cell A4
• Let go of the left mouse button when cells A1, A2, A3 and A4 are highlighted
• The image below shows what you are aiming for

The cells highlighted in the image above have a different colour to the normal white colour of a cell. When you highlight cells, you can do things to all the cells as a group.

To centre the text and numbers in our highlighted cells, try this:

• From the Excel Ribbon at the top of the screen, locate the Alignment panel. Here's the Alignment panel in Excel 2007:

And here it is in Excel 2010 and 2013:

You can see the various alignment options laid out. These ones:

Hold your mouse over each alignment icon and you'll see an explanation of what they do. Click each icon and see what they do to your highlighted cells.

You can also click the arrow in the bottom right of the Alignment panel to bring up the Format Cells box (the one circled below).

When you click the arrow, you'll see this dialogue box:

Notice the Text Alignment section at the top of the Alignment tab. It has two drop-down menus, one for Horizontal alignment and one for vertical alignment.

• Click the arrow on the Horizontal drop-down menu, the one with Left (Indent) on it
• You'll see the following:

As you can see, you have plenty of options to choose from in Excel. But click on Center. Do the same for the Vertical drop-down menu. Then click OK at the bottom of the Format Cells dialogue box.

The text and numbers in cells A1, A2, A3 and A4 should now be centred, and your spreadsheet will look like the one below:

Before moving on to other types of formatting you can do in Excel, have a try of this:

• Highlight the cells A5 and A6 on your spreadsheet
• Bring up the Format Cells dialogue box, just as you did above
• Make the alignment changes from the Horizontal and Vertical drop-down menus
• Click OK to get rid of the dialogue box
• Now click inside of cell A5 on your spreadsheet and enter any number you like
• Hit the Enter key

The number you just entered should also be centred. So even if a cell is empty you can still apply formatting to it.

In the next part, we'll take a look at the various font formatting you can do in Excel.

How to Edit Text in a Cell

In the previous part, you created a simple Excel spreadsheet. You'll now learn how to edit the text in a cell.

To change the text in cell A1, you can just click inside of the cell and start typing. Anything you had there previously would be erased. But if you just want to edit the text (if you've made a spelling mistake, for example), then this is no good. If you want to keep most of the text, and just make minor changes, then you need to do something else.

In the image below, you can see what's known as the Formula Bar. The Formula Bar is like a long textbox that you can click inside and start typing. Here's what it looks like in Excel 2007:

And here it is in Excel 2010 and 2013:

To edit a Cell in Excel, first click inside the cell you want to edit (A1 for us). Then click inside the formula bar. Notice where your cursor is now:

The image above shows that the cell A1 is active, but the cursor is inside of the formula bar.

With the cursor in the Formula Bar, try changing the text "Numbers" to "Add these Numbers". Press the Enter key when you've made the changes. Your spreadsheet should look like ours below:

Notice that the active cell is now A2 and that the Formula Bar has a 3 in it.

However, there's a problem. There's not enough room in cell A1 for our new text. Part of it seems to be in the B column.

The solution is to widen the whole of Column A. Try this:

• Move your mouse up to the start of the A Column
• The pointer will change shape and now be a black arrow

• Move your mouse over the line that separates Column A and Column B
• Your mouse pointer will change shape again, this time to a cross with arrows

• When you see the new shape, hold down your left mouse button
• Keep the left mouse button held down, and drag your cross to the right
• Once you have all the text in the A column, let go of the left mouse button. The images below show the process in action (the top two are from Excel 2007 and the bottom two are from Excel 2010/2013):

    

 

    

You can make the height of the Rows bigger or smaller by using exactly the same technique.

The numbers, however, don't look very tidy. We'll now see how to centre them, and the text as well.