How to prevent Text Overflow in Excel

Text overflow can break the appearance of a spreadsheet as it might look awkward with overflowing texts coming out of a cell. If you have a spreadsheet with this problem, you can fix the text-overflow issue in Microsoft Excel so that it looks better and clean.

What is text overflow in Microsoft Excel

As the name defines, if the text is going outside of a cell, it is called text-overflow. The default width of a cell might not always be complying with the width of the whole text. The default width of an Excel cell is 8.43mm, which is minimal, and most of the people often get problems. At such a moment, the text gets hidden by the right-side cell, and it is not accessible for reading once you are done with the editing.

Whichever version of Microsoft Office you are using, you can get the same issue in every Excel spreadsheet. Also, it happens with Excel Online too. There are several ways to deal with this issue. However, you should know that every method lets you increase the width of the whole column at once. If there are ten cells in a column and you try to increase the width of the first cell, the same will be applied on the whole column - not just one cell.

How to stop or hide Text Overflow in Excel

To fix the text-overflow problem in Microsoft Excel, follow these suggestions-

1. Manually increase the width of a column
2. Use the AutoFit Column Width option
3. Change the default width of a cell

To know the steps in detail, keep reading.

1] Manually increase the width of a column

It is probably the easiest way to get rid of this problem. Although it is an old-school method, it works perfectly. No matter if the width of a cell should be 10mm or 100mm, you can change it manually without any expert knowledge. At first, open the spreadsheet, and hover your mouse over the line that divided two columns. You should see a two-way arrow. Once you get that, click and hold your mouse and drag towards the right side.

2] Use the AutoFit Column Width option

It is a handy option that lets you set the width of a column automatically. It detects the maximum width of a cell and applies that to the whole column. You do not need to use the mouse-dragging method. The advantage of this trick is that you can increase the width of all columns at once. To get started, select all the columns that need to be changed, and click the Format menu, which should be visible in the Home tab. After that, click on the AutoFit Column Width option.

The width should be changed immediately.

3] Change default width of cell/column

If you already know how much width you need precisely, you can change the default width of the column. For that, open the Format menu in Excel and select the Default Width option. Now, you need to choose a width.

By default, it should carry the millimeter unit, which is the default unit of Excel. In case you changed it earlier, you need to set the width accordingly.

I hope this simple tutorial will help you fix the text-overflow issue in Microsoft Excel.