00:00In this Excel tutorial, I'm going to show you some of the alignment options that you have in Excel
00:06that help you so that you can see your data the way you want to see it.
00:10And I'm using this sample spreadsheet.
00:13It's a pretty big spreadsheet.
00:14It's got lots of numbers, lots of data that's recorded in it.
00:18But the problem is there's so much data that sometimes it doesn't fit within the cells that I have.
00:25And you can see the result if that happens.
00:27If the data is too big to fit into their cells, then you get this symbol here, a bunch of
00:32pound signs or hashtags.
00:34And that's not really a problem, but it makes it hard to read and understand the data.
00:39So let's look at some of the options that we have.
00:42Here on the Home tab, Home ribbon, in the alignment group, I have some tools that can help me to
00:48be able to read this data
00:49even though the data is too big for the cell size that I've set it to.
00:53So one thing I could do is click on a cell and then go here to the alignment group.
00:58I'm looking for an option called Shrink to Fit.
01:01I don't see it there.
01:03And so I'm going to click the Launch button here in the lower right corner of the alignment group.
01:08If I click on that, it gives me all of the alignment options for the cell that I selected.
01:13One of the options is Shrink to Fit.
01:16I click OK.
01:17And look, now that number fits in the space provided.
01:21Now what if I shrink the column even more?
01:24Look what happens.
01:25The numbers shrink even more so that they can fit.
01:28No matter how small I make that column, the number that I have in cell J2 will shrink to fit
01:35the space provided.
01:36So that's a great option to have.
01:38Now I could apply that to each of these other cells.
01:41I could click on the next cell, click the Launch button in alignment, and choose Shrink to Fit.
01:46Click OK.
01:47But that's going to take forever.
01:49So better than that, just click on the entire column, column J.
01:54It highlights the whole thing.
01:55Then go to the alignment group launch button, choose Shrink to Fit, click OK.
02:00And now everything will shrink to fit.
02:03So that's a great option.
02:04The only downside is that it gets so small sometimes that you can't read it at all.
02:10OK, so that's one thing to consider.
02:12Another option that we have is to use Wrap Text.
02:16And this works best with words better than it does with numbers.
02:20So I'm going to click here where it says Month Number.
02:22And I'm going to shrink this column down a little bit.
02:25The numbers only go 1 through 12.
02:27So this column really doesn't need to be very wide,
02:30except for the fact that the column title, Month Number, that takes up a lot of space.
02:35So I would like to be able to shrink this down, but still be able to read Month Number.
02:41So with that cell selected, on the Home tab, Home ribbon, in the alignment group,
02:46I could click the Launch button and do it that way.
02:49But in this case, there's a button here that says Wrap Text.
02:53Now, for me, the Wrap Text button is kind of small.
02:56It's basically a square.
02:58For you, it might be bigger.
03:00In Microsoft Office, these options adjust their size based on your screen size.
03:07So I have a pretty small computer screen, so it has to adjust the size of the buttons.
03:12So don't panic if you don't see the exact same button as I have.
03:15Just look around for Wrap Text and click it.
03:18Now, if you can't find it at all, just go down to the Launch button, and you should see it
03:24there.
03:25Okay, so what did that do?
03:26Wrap Text makes it so that the text fits in the column width that I provided,
03:32but the way it fits is by wrapping the text.
03:35And so it made row 1 much taller than it used to be, but it's the same width.
03:41Let's go back.
03:42I'm going to do Ctrl-Z to go back.
03:44You can see the width that it is here.
03:45Now, if I do Ctrl-Y to redo it, you can see it's the same width.
03:49It just made it taller, and the text wraps.
03:52To be honest, I don't like that very much in this case,
03:55but I want you to know that that option is available to help you fit your data into the cells
03:59the way you want them to look.
04:01Now, there is a third tool and a third option to consider,
04:04and that is, instead of wrapping text, maybe what I could do is use this alignment option here, Orientation.
04:11So I could orient the text in row 1 so that it's vertical.
04:16Okay, you can see what that did.
04:18With it being vertical, I can really make this column very, very narrow,
04:23and I can still read the column title just fine.
04:27But that takes up a lot of vertical space, doesn't it?
04:30So there are some options to angle it.
04:32So there it is, angled counterclockwise.
04:34And if I want to, I can do that to the entire row, angle counterclockwise.
04:40And that does enable me to shrink these columns a little bit more.
04:44So hopefully those three alignment options will help you to arrange your data
04:49so that it's easier for people to read and to learn from.
04:52Thanks for watching.
04:54I hope that you found this tutorial to be helpful.
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