How to Enter Within a Cell in Excel (Start a New Line)↵
Did you try pressing enter in excel expecting the cursor to move to the next line but met disappointment?
Yup, we have done the same. 😁
It simply happens because, unlike text editors, Excel does not let you move to the next line by pressing enter. Instead, it moves you to the next cell.
To help you with that, we are here to teach you a quick shortcut. You can insert a line break in excel on both Windows and Mac. You will also learn how to add a line break using the CONCATENATE function.
We have created a data set for you to practice. Download it here.
Table of Contents
How to Start a New Line in a Cell
You can start a new line in Excel in less than 3 seconds – it’s so easy! Let’s consider an example.
Say you have a sentence.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
You want to divide the line into two separate parts:
(1) Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
(2) A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
In Excel, pressing the enter button will only move your cursor to the next cell. So to insert a line break in Excel:
- Double-click the selected cell.
- Place your cursor where you want to add a new line.
- Press enter.
You can also use the formula bar to start a new line in an Excel cell.
In our case, we want to insert the line break after the dot before the start of the second line.
- If you’re on Windows – press Alt + Enter to insert a line break.
- Otherwise, press CTRL + Option key + Return key to add a carriage return if you are on Mac.
The line break appears in the Excel cell. 😀
Pro Tip!
You can also add a line break after specific characters by using the Find and Replace feature. Select the cell and open the Find and Replace dialog box.
Enter the specific character in the find tab. Now, move to the replace tab and press CTRL + J. Click to replace all, and carriage returns appear at the specified positions.
How to Add Multiple Lines in a Cell
Adding multiple lines in Excel is no big deal. You can add more than one line in a single cell.
Say you have this sentence.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers?
And you want to break it into three parts like
(1) Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
(2) A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
(3) If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers?
It’s easy.
- Select the positions where you want to insert multiple lines.
- Press the Alt key + Enter to start a new line. You can also add spacing in selected cells – simply press the key combination twice.
Multiple line breaks appear in the selected cell.
Insert Line Breaks with CONCATENATE
Among Excel’s wide range of functions is the CONCATENATE function. It is a text-combining function and is represented by &.
Usually, it is written in one of these two ways:
- =CONCAT(text1, text2, [text3],..)
- =text1 & text2 & text3 &… textN
Let’s use the previous sentence as an example here. Say you want the following two phrases to be combined into one cell.
(1) Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
(2) A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
Enter appropriate arguments in the formula. Since our text is in cells A2 and A3, we will use the following formula:
=A2 & ” ” & A3
Upon exiting the edit mode, Microsoft Excel will show the sentence in a single line.
But that’s not what we wanted. Why didn’t the line break appear? 🤔
That’s because the Enter keyboard shortcut does not work with formulas. Excel needs the CHAR function for inserting line breaks with functions.
So, to insert a line break:
- We will enable wrap text feature from the Home Tab for the selected cell. It is under the alignment group.
Once the toggle button is switched on for the selected cell, we will add the CHAR function. Each OS has a special character code, and the code for a line break in Windows is 10 and 13 for Mac.
- Add CHAR(10) in the formula in place of ” ” to add a line break
=A2 & CHAR(10) & A3.
The line feed appears in the Excel cell.
You can also use the TEXTJOIN function in place of CONCATENATE – they both serve the same purpose.
Show New Lines with Wrap Text
Wrap text lets you easily insert line breaks between text strings in the same cell. Simply select the cell with text inside and click the wrap text button from the Home Tab.
As evident from the name, the wrap text feature ‘wraps’ the text around a worksheet cell. It adjusts the text and adds line breaks automatically to autofit the column width.
For instance, the first line in this worksheet exceeds the location inside the column. As it occupies the next several cells.
To adjust it, we will use wrap text to limit the line in an Excel cell.
- Select the cell.
- Adjust the row height.
- Enable the wrap text feature.
The text will now look something like this:
You can do the same for the next row and other multiple cells.
That’s it – Now what?
This article taught us how to enter single and multiple line breaks in a cell. We also saw how to use the wrap text feature in Excel and a quick trick to add a new line with formulas.
Although these shortcuts come in handy while working in Excel, they constitute only a small part of this gigantic spreadsheet software.
Excel has so much more to offer, like the basic VLOOKUP, IF, and SUMIF functions that you must learn.
Enroll in my 30-minute free email course that can help you master these functions (and more!). 😀
Other Resources
Inserting line breaks using wrap text in Excel is much more than what has been explained here. Learn more about line feed and wrap text here.
Also, if this article interests you might also like our guides on Autofitting in Excel, Inserting Multiple Rows, and Adding Columns in Excel.