How do I align text in the middle of a cell?

This Excel tutorial explains how to center text across multiple cells in Excel 2016 (with screenshots and step-by-step instructions).

See solution in other versions of Excel:

• Excel 2013
• Excel 2011 for Mac
• Excel 2010
• Excel 2007
• Excel 2003

Question: I want to center text across multiple cells in Microsoft Excel 2016 but I don't want to have to merge the cells. How can I do this?

Answer: Select the cells that you wish to center the text across.

TIP: The text that you are trying to center must be in the left most cell (first cell) of the selected range.

Right-click and then select "Format Cells" from the popup menu.

When the Format Cells window appears, select the Alignment tab. Click on "Center Across Selection" in the drop-down box called Horizontal.

Now when you return to your spreadsheet, you should see the text centered across the cells that you selected.

Below are the steps on how to change text alignment in a cell in the most popular spreadsheet programs. View the steps for the program you are using by clicking one of the links below.

• Align text in Microsoft Excel.
• How to align text in Google Sheets.
• Aligning text in OpenOffice Calc.

Align text in Microsoft Excel

You can change the horizontal alignment of text in a cell using options on the Microsoft Excel Ribbon.

1. Select the cell or which you want to change the alignment.
2. In the Ribbon, on the Home tab, select the type of alignment you want to use, as shown in the picture above.

For example, if you wanted to center the text in a cell, click the center icon.

To change the alignment of text in a cell using a keyboard shortcut, follow the steps below.

1. Select the cell you want to change.
2. Press Alt+H.
3. Press A.
4. Press L for left align, C for center, or R for right align.

Adjusting the vertical alignment

Change the vertical alignment of a cell's text by following the same steps above, but select Top Align, Middle Align, or Bottom Align.

Tip

You can also use the Orientation button to make the text vertical, at an angle, or any orientation you desire.

How to align text in Google Sheets

In Google Sheets, to change the horizontal alignment of text in a cell, select the cell and click the Horizontal Align button on the toolbar (shown above). Once done, you'll have the option to select Left, Center, and Right alignment.

or

Press one of the shortcut keys to adjust the alignment of any selected cell. For left alignment, highlight the text and press Ctrl+Shift+L. For center alignment, highlight the text and press Ctrl+Shift+E. For right alignment, highlight the text and press Ctrl+Shift+R.

Adjusting the vertical alignment

To change the vertical alignment of text in a cell, click the Vertical Align icon in the toolbar (as shown above). Once selected, choose Top, Middle or Bottom, depending on how you want to align the text.

Tip

You can also use the Text Rotation option (shown above) to make the text vertical, a tilt, or at any angle you desire.

Aligning text in OpenOffice Calc

Change the horizontal alignment of cell text in OpenOffice Writer by highlighting the cell and clicking the left, center, or right align icons in the top toolbar. These icons look similar to those shown in the above example picture of Microsoft Excel.

Adjusting the vertical alignment

OpenOffice calc does not show a vertical align option in the top toolbar. However, vertical alignment options are shown in the Properties window appearing to the right of the spreadsheet when a cell is selected. From this window, you can select Align Top, Align Center Vertically, and Align Bottom.

We use the CSS property text-align, to center align text in table cells. We use inline, internal style sheet for text alignment in table cells.

The text-align property of CSS sets the alignment of the content in and .

By default, the content of are center-aligned and the content of are left-aligned. We can override the attribute by other to change the alignment.

Steve says:
August 1, 2018 at 2:36 pm

Hi,
Maybe you can help me with this? I'm trying to figure out how to bottom align my field of text in an Excel spreadsheet 2013 and 2016 when there's a lot of text in the field. I'm using the spreadsheet as a tracker type document to track events, etc. And I have the field bottom aligned but when I look at the spreadsheet the fields do not align the text to the bottom. Instead, I have to double click on the field to "activate" it which then allows me to see the entire journal description and all the entries. During the input process, I am clicking ALT-ENTER to skip down a line to enter a new journal entry. ie.
(ALT-ENTER)7/30 Sent Request
(ALT-ENTER)7/31 Received quote
Bottom line- is I'd like to see the latest journal entry that is situated at the bottom of the field when I have the spreadsheet open but not having to click on the field to open the cell in order to view the latest entry which is at the bottom. (If that makes sense :) Thanks for your help, Steve