Page 127 - Excel Timesaving Techniques for Dummies

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Technique 21: Dazzling Alignments for Data Entries
Orientation to reorient the data entries by rotat-
ing up or down the angle of the baseline that their
characters rest on or by setting the entries so the
characters appear one over the other in a single
thin column.
Text Control to wrap the text in the entries on as
many lines as needed to stay within the current
column width (thereby automatically increasing
the row heights), reduce the font size of the
entries so that they fit on one line within their
current column widths, or to merge the current
cell selection into one large cell within which the
entry on the leftmost cell is aligned.
Right-to-Left to change the normal left-to-right
reading order of the characters to right to left, as
required when using a language such as Hebrew
or Arabic whose characters are read in that order.

Indenting data entries • Figure 21-1: Use the options on the Alignment tab of the
Format Cells dialog box to select unusual
Normally when it comes to horizontal alignment,
alignments.
Excel either automatically sets the first character of
the entry flush with the left edge of the cell (the left
alignment default for all text entries) or the last char-
acter of the entry flush with the right edge (the right
alignment default for all numeric entries). If you cen-
ter a data entry (by clicking the Center button on the
Formatting toolbar), Excel attempts to make the
space between the left edge and the first character
in the entry equal to the space between the last
character and the right edge.
Instead of relying on centering to set off particular
entries in a worksheet, many times you can just
indent the entries from the left edge to set them off
from the others. For example, Figure 21-2 shows a
sales table that contains sales figures for three kinds
of recording media: CDs, cassette tapes, and LPs.
Each of these three groups has it own subheadings • Figure 21-2: Sales table showing the breakdown of sales
that list the same four music categories (Rock, Jazz, by media and category.
Classical, and Other). You can improve the legibility
of the row headings for this table by indenting these To do this, you could just select all the ranges with
category subheadings. the subheadings as a single cell selection and then
click the Increase Indent button on the Formatting