Microsoft Excel Help: Use Excel As A Word Processor

Microsoft Excel Help: Use Excel As A Word Processor
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Strategy: Use the Justify command on the Fill menu.

  1. If you want the words to fill columns A through K, then select a range such as A23:K35. Note that you are including a few blank rows in the selection, as shown in Fig. 97.

  2. From the menu, select Edit – Fill – Justify, as shown in Fig. 98.

Result: Excel will rearrange the text to fill each row, as shown in Fig. 99.

Gotcha: As shown in Fig. 100, if you have a few words in bold in one cell, this formatting will be lost.

Alternate Strategy: Textboxes also solve this problem. Draw a textbox to fill columns A through K and paste your text into the textbox, as shown in Fig. 101.

You can format the textbox to hide its border. Ctrl+Right-click on the border of the text box and choose Format Textbox. On the Colors and Lines tab, choose No Line from the Line color dropdown, as shown in Fig. 102.

Summary: When you need to add a bit of text to an Excel worksheet, the Justify command can make the range look as if it were created with a word processor.

Images

Fig. 97

Fig. 98

Fig. 99

Fig. 100

Fig. 101

Fig. 102