How to Rotate Text in Excel: Simple Methods You Should Know
Whenever you need to visualize data in Microsoft Excel, you face a challenge to make the report easily readable. The challenge becomes tougher when column headings contain long texts. You can easily overcome this hurdle of data visualization by rotating the texts in cells the way you want. Continue reading to learn effortless steps to rotate text in Excel.
Rotate Text in Excel: Using Orientation Functions
Orientation is a function of the Alignment command of the Home tab in the Excel ribbon menu. If you want to rotate texts in a cell with pre-set angles, you’ll find some options in the Orientation section. Here are the alignment steps to perform:
- Select the cell or cell range for which you want to rotate texts.
- Head over to the Excel ribbon and click on the Home tab.
- You’ll find the Orientation functions in the Alignment commands section.
- Click on the Orientation drop-down menu to find pre-set text alignment formats like Angle Clockwise, Angle Counterclockwise, Rotate Text Down, Rotate Text Up, and Vertical Text.
- Select the Angle Counterclockwise to rotate the texts by 45° counterclockwise.
- If you’re also placing column headings below the numbers, you can apply Angle Clockwise alignment.
- Now, select all the bottom column headings and drag them to the right by one cell to adjust the headings.
You can also record a Macro while performing the steps. Execute the Macro in the future to save time.
Rotate Text in Excel: From Alignment Settings
You need to use the Alignment Settings if you want text rotations or alignments other than the pre-set formats. It lets you manually adjust the rotation angle. Here is how:
- Select the cell range that you want to rotate.
- Right-click and then select Format Cells from the context menu.
- You can also click on the small arrow at the bottom right corner of the Alignment commands section in the Home tab.
- In the Orientation box, you can drag the angle to fine-tune rotation or enter the rotation value in degrees.
- Click on Ok to apply the rotation angle to the selected cell texts.
This method is suitable for you if you’re a data analyst and want to go beyond the ready-made text rotation formats. You get more freedom in showcasing your data visualization creativity by rotating texts from the Alignment Settings box.
Rotate Text in Excel: Using Keyboard Shortcuts
There are no hotkeys to apply pre-set text alignments from the Orientation function. Instead, you can try the universal keyboard-based operation of Excel by following these steps:
- Select a text or a cell range for text rotation.
- Press Alt to bring up Excel ribbon menu shortcuts.
- Now, press H to go to the Home tab and then hit FQ to expand the Orientation functions.
- Tap O for counterclockwise rotation and L for clockwise rotation.
- You can also press U for rotate up and D for rotate down.
If you prefer keyboard-based navigation in Excel, you should definitely try these steps to give your texts angled alignment in Excel.
Final Thoughts
Though Microsoft Excel is not a robust word processing program, it offers considerable text formatting options. For example, you can rotate text in Excel to adjust more column headings on one screen. Also, the report looks good when you use customized text rotation. Follow any of the above-mentioned steps for creative text alignment in Excel.
