Edit and control of Excel 2007 cell contents

In Excel, you can edit the contents of a cell directly in a cell, or you can edit the contents of the cell in the formula bar and control the content.

Note In edit mode, many ribbon commands will be inactive and you will not be able to use them.

1. To place the contents of the cell in edit mode, do one of the following:

• Double-click the cell that contains the data you want to edit.

• Click the cell that contains the data you want to edit, and then click anywhere in the formula bar.

This locates the insertion point in the cell or the formula bar.

Tip To move the insertion point to the end of the cell's contents, click the cell, and then press F2.

2, to edit the contents of the cell, do one of the following:

• To delete a character, click where you want to remove the character, press BACKSPACE, or select the character, and then press DELETE.

• To insert a character, click where you want to insert the character, and then type the new character.

• To replace specific characters, select them, and then type the new characters.

• To open overtype mode to replace existing characters with new characters as you type, press INSERT.

Note You can turn overtype mode on or off only when you are in edit mode. When Overtype mode is open, the character to the right of the insertion point is highlighted in the formula bar, and the character is overwritten when you type.

• To start a new line of text in a specific position in a cell, click where you want to break the row, and press Alt+enter.

3, to enter your changes, please press ENTER.

Tip Before you press ENTER, you can cancel any changes you have made by pressing ESC. After you press ENTER, you can cancel any changes you have made by clicking Undo on the Quick Access Toolbar.

Comments

• Cells may display "#####" when the cell contains data in numeric format and the width of the data is greater than the column width. To see all the text, you must increase the column width.

How to change column widths

1, click the cell for which you want to change the column width.

2, on the Start tab, in the Cells group, click Format.

3. Under cell size, do one of the following:

• To fit all the text into a cell, click AutoFit Column width.

• To specify a larger column width, click Column width, and then type the width you want in the column width box.

You can also display multiple lines of text in a cell by wrapping the line.

Turn automatic completion of cell entries on or off

Microsoft Office Excel 2007 completes the text entry that you just started typing in a data column-if you type the first few letters that match an existing entry in the column. If you want to stop the AutoComplete feature, you can turn off this option.

• Click Microsoft Office buttons, and then click Excel Options.

• Click Advanced, and then under Edit options, select or clear the Enable memory keys for cell values check box to turn this option on or off.

Wrap lines in a cell

If you want text to appear on multiple lines in a cell, you can format the cell to wrap the line, or you can enter a manual line break.

Text Wrap

1, in the worksheet, select the cells you want to format.

2, on the Start tab, in the Align group, click Wrap Line.

Comments

• The data in the cell wraps automatically to fit the column width. When you change the column width, the data exchange is automatically adjusted.

• If all of the wrapped text is not visible, it may be that the row is set to a specific height.

Enter line breaks

• To start a new line of text at a specific location in the cell, double-click the cell, click where you want to break it in the cell, and then press Alt+enter.