Microsoft Office

Part I
Getting Started with Excel
FIGURE 3.2
The Formula bar, expanded in height to show more information in the cell.
What happens when you enter text that’s longer than its column’s current width? If the cells to the immediate
right are blank, Excel displays the text in its entirety, appearing to spill the entry into adjacent cells. If an
adjacent cell isn’t blank, Excel displays as much of the text as possible. (The full text is contained in the cell;
it’s just not displayed.) If you need to display a long text string in a cell that’s adjacent to a nonblank cell,
you can take one of several actions:
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Edit your text to make it shorter.
Increase the width of the column.
Use a smaller font.
Wrap the text within the cell so that it occupies more than one line. Choose Home ➪
Alignment ➪ Wrap Text to toggle wrapping on and off for the selected cell or range.
Entering Dates and Times into Your Worksheets
Excel treats dates and times as special types of numeric values. Typically, these values are formatted so that
they appear as dates or times because we humans find it far easier to understand these values when they
appear in the correct format. If you work with dates and times, you need to understand Excel’s date and
time system.
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