How to Make a Paragraph in Excel

Microsoft Excel is effective as a powerful and robust number-cruncher for most users, but the grids and cells within the spreadsheet can easily support other characters too. You can type text data in Excel, creating a sentence or a standard paragraph with multiple lines of sentences. However, as you go to type or paste words into a cell, the spreadsheet program may not display normal-looking sentences and paragraphs that occur automatically in other document-based programs. Nonetheless, you can push Excel beyond its affinity for numbers, by making the cells function like a word processor for your paragraphs within the spreadsheet.

Open Excel to the worksheet that will use paragraphs.

Click on a single cell that will store the paragraph. Right-click and then select "Format Cells" from the menu, opening a dialog box. Select the "Alignment" tab in the dialog box. Check mark the "Wrap Text" box. Click "OK." Note the cell's address, such as "A1" for the first cell in the top-left corner.

Move the cursor to the top of the column that addresses the chosen cell by letter (A, B, C...). Click the column letter, which temporarily highlights all cells within the column. Right-click the column letter. Select "Column Width" from the menu, opening another dialog box. Type in a number greater than the existing value, such as "50," to increase the width of the column. Click "OK." Repeat this step until you reach the preferred paragraph width.

Double-click the cell. This selects the cell and activates the ability to edit inside the cell. Begin typing your paragraph. Press "Enter" after you have input all the data; Excel will show the text as a paragraph.