Getting Oriented in Excel 2010 part 3

You can also click on the red diamond referenced by the arrow above, and drag it along that Orientation half-circle to angle your  text, too. Either way, you could get the example shown in Figure 4–45:

To turn this effect off—that is, to restore the data to a level orientation—return to the Degrees field and type “0.” And if you  click that vertical Text field you see beneath the Orientation heading, that’s what you’ll get—vertical text in their cells, as per  the Vertical Text options we saw in the Orientation drop-down menu in the Alignment Group.

On the left side of the Format Cells dialog are various Text alignment options. Now some of the options in those Horizontal  and Vertical drop-down menus are obscure, but here goes: General—Brings about standard data alignment defaults, e.g., text  is left-aligned, numbers rightaligned.

Obviously you’d only select this to restore realigned data to their original alignments.

Right and Left (Indent)—These simply push, or indent, data in their cells to the right or the left by the number of characters  you type in the Indent field in the dialog box. But just remember that if you select a right indent, the text will move left,  because it is the indent itself that pushes to the right. Indents can bring about some rather unusual visual results. If I select a  right indent and type 10 in the indent field, I can wind up with something like this (Figure 4–46):

Don’t be fooled—the text is actually “in” the cell selected by the cell pointer. This can’t happen with a number, however, and  for a reason we’ve already discussed in the chapter on data entry; Excel won’t allow a number to creep into another cell. Thus,  if I type 43 in the very cell you see above with the same indent settings, this is what I’ll get (Figure 4–47):

Here the indent carries out what’s tantamount to an Auto Fit. The number is indeed indented, but only within its own cell.

Yeah—you’re not likely to use this very often. The two indent buttons (Figure 4–48) found on the Alignment Group on the  Home tab of the ribbon:

equate respectively with the Right and Left Indent options in the Alignment Dialog box—but look at the buttons. What I’m  calling Right Indent features an arrow pointing left, and what I’ve called Left Indent bears an arrow pointing right.

Nevertheless that’s what they are. Moreover, the Alignment Group caption clinging to the first of the two buttons above (seen  when you rest you mouse over it) calls it Decrease Indent, and not Right Indent; and the other button is labeled Increase  Indent; andneither of these labels corresponds to what the same commands are called in the Alignment Dialog box.

A couple other qualifications to what is again, not the sort of command you’re likely to call upon daily: Click the left-pointing  indent button arrow in the button group and nothing happens in the cell at the outset—the data stay put. But click either left or  right setting in the dialog box and type a number in the indent field and the data will indent in the desired direction.

Sorry about that. Center—Really an equivalent of the Center alignment button. Typing a number in Indent here has no effect. Fill—Takes any data you’ve written in the cell and repeats it in the cell, until the cell’s width is taken up with the data. For  example, if I type the word “the” in a cell and select Fill, I’ll see (Figure 4– 49):

And if I go on to widen the cell now, I’ll get Figure 4–50:

And yes, you can bring about the same effect with a number—though I can’t imagine why you’d want to. That is, if I type 3 in a  cell and invoke the Fill format I’ll see 333333 across the width of the cell—but its actual value is still….3. Don’t ask questions,  but remember— this is a format, and as such, it doesn’t change the number’s value. The Justify and Distributed options are  similar, though not quite identical to one another.

These commands represent a kind inverse of the column Auto Fit; instead of widening a column to accommodate its widest  entry, Justify and Distributed treat the current column width as a fixed margin and stack the text in the cell so that it all fits. So  for example, if I type (Figure 4–51):

And select Justify, the text is realigned like this (Figure 4–52):

The text continues to use the existing column width, and so needs to raise its row height in order to pinch all the text within  that width. The command is called Justify because it emulates a similar effect in Word, whereby text in a paragraph exhibits  straight left and right margins—at least to the extent possible. Distribution differs only in that it attempts to distribute the text  equally across each line in the cell, so that each line spans the current column width, including the last line—again, to the  extent possible.