How to Shrink Text to Make it Fit in a Cell in Excel 2013

Microsoft Excel has a variety of different view settings that you can customize to change the appearance of your data.

Including among these options is an Excel shrink text to fit cell setting that will automatically adjust the font size of your data so that the text remains visible in the cells.

Our tutorial below will show you where to find this setting and how to apply it to your selected data.

Microsoft Excel Shrink Text to Fit Cell Guide

  1. Open your spreadsheet in Excel 2013.
  2. Select the cell(s) to modify.
  3. Right-click the selected cell(s), then choose Format Cells.
  4. Click the Alignment tab.
  5. Check the box to the left of Shrink to fit, then click the OK button at the bottom of the window to apply your changes.

Our guide continues below with more information on the Excel shrink text to fit cell setting, including pictures of these steps.

Data that is entered into the cell of an Excel 2013 worksheet can often be larger than the cell itself.

You have probably learned how to resize rows and columns to make them larger or smaller, but you may encounter a situation where you are unable to adjust cell sizes.

In this case, the best option is to shrink the size of your text so that it fits within the constraints of the current cell size.

Our article below will show you how to use the “shrink to fit” formatting option to automatically shrink your text for you.

Our making rows taller guide in Excel can show you a way to quickly expand all of the rows in your Excel spreadsheet.

Using “Shrink to Fit” in Excel 2013 (Guide with Pictures)

The steps in the guide below will show you how to automatically resize the text in a cell so that it fits within the current size of the cell. If you would like to adjust the size of the row or column so that the data fits without adjusting the text size, then read this article.

Step 1: Open your worksheet in Excel 2013.

Step 2: Click the cell containing the text that you wish to shrink.

select a cell

Step 3: Right-click the selected cell, then click the Format Cells option.

right-click, then format cells

Step 4: Click the Alignment tab at the top of the window.

click the alignment tab

Step 5: Check the box to the left of Shrink to fit in the Text control section of the window.

You can then click the OK button at the bottom of the window to apply your changes.

how to shrink to fit in excel 2013

Now that you have completed the Excel shrink text to fit cell process, all of the text that is contained within each of the cells in your spreadsheet should resize to fit inside of their cells.

Would you like to be able to easily fit your spreadsheet on one page to eliminate some of the headaches that come with printing in Excel? Learn about three ways that you can fit to one page when printing in Excel 2013.

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