How to Hide Overflowing Texts in Microsoft Excel

 

Hide Overflow Text

When you type a lot of text into a cell in Excel, it overflows over to the adjacent cells. For example, the text entered into cell A1 in the image below overflows into cells B1 through E1.

If we type text into cell B1, the overflow text from cell A1 is blocked by the text in cell B1.

If you want to hide the overflow text in a cell, such as A1 in this example, without having to type anything into the adjacent cells, right-click on the cell and select “Format Cells” from the popup menu.

On the “Format Cells” dialog box, click the “Alignment” tab. Select “Fill” from the “Horizontal” drop-down list. Click “OK” to accept the change and close the dialog box.

The overflow text from cell A1 is hidden even though there is no text in cell B1.

You can prevent text from overflowing to adjacent cells using the “Wrap Text” feature. Select the cell containing overflowing text and access the “Format Cells” dialog box as described earlier in this article. Click the “Alignment” tab and select the “Wrap text” check box so there is a check mark in the box. Click “OK” to accept the change and close the dialog box.

When you choose to wrap text in a cell, the cell height is adjusted to accommodate the text. If you want to keep the row height at the standard value (15) for a single line of text, right-click on the row number and select “Row Height” from the popup menu.

On the “Row Height” dialog box, type “15” in the edit box and click “OK”.

The row height is adjusted and the remaining text that doesn’t fit on the first line appears to be hidden.

If you don’t change the “Row Height” back to its original value and you turn off the “Wrap text” feature, you’ll notice that the text now takes up only one line but the height of the row remains the same as it was when it adjusted to accommodate the wrapped text. You can either set the “Row Height” to “15” or you can automatically adjust the row height to fit the one line of text using the “AutoFit Row Height” feature. Make sure the “Home” tab is the active tab on the ribbon and click “Format” in the “Cells” section. Select “AutoFit Row Height” in the “Cell Size” section on the drop-down menu.