Office 2007 Bible

Entering Text and Values into Your Worksheets

To enter a numerical value into a cell, move the cell pointer to the appropriate cell, type the value, and then press Enter or one of the arrow keys. The value is displayed in the cell and also appears in Excel’s Formula bar when the cell is active. You can include decimal points and currency symbols when entering values, along with plus signs, minus signs, and commas. If you precede a value with a minus sign or enclose it in parentheses, Excel considers it to be a negative number.

Entering text into a cell is just as easy as entering a value: Activate the cell, type the text, and then press Enter or an arrow key. A cell can contain a maximum of about 32,000 characters—more than enough to hold a typical chapter in this book. Even though a cell can hold a huge number of characters, you’ll find that it’s not possible to actually display all these characters.

Tip

If you type an exceptionally long text entry into a cell, the Formula bar may not show all the text. To display more of the text in the Formula bar, click the bottom of the Formula bar and drag down to increase the height (see Figure 13-2).

What happens when you enter text that’s longer than its column’s current width? If the cells to the immediate right are blank, Excel displays the text in its entirety, appearing to spill the entry into adjacent cells. If an adjacent cell isn’t blank, Excel displays as much of the text as possible. (The full text is contained in the cell; it’s ...