Most of us use line breaks without thinking. Breaks can be used to start a new paragraph in Microsoft Word, in everyday situations when writing an email, posting on Facebook, or commenting on something you’ve seen or read online.
In most applications, line breaks are very easy to add – just press Enter on the keyboard and voila! One of the few applications where this won’t work is Excel. If you ever pressed Enter in Excel, you know that it just moves the table cursor to the next cell.
Do not rush to get upset! There is a simple keyboard shortcut that allows you to add as many line breaks within a single cell as you like. Try it yourself! This method also works in Google Sheets.
Windows: Alt + Enter
Mac: Ctrl+Option+Enter
Use this keyboard shortcut when you need to insert a line break, and after the key Enter leave the function of moving to the next cell. It may take some time to get used to, but over time this habit can become very useful, especially if your work is closely related to Excel. Look at the example below. We used breaks to print each address on two lines.
Small caveat: It hardly makes sense to get too carried away with line breaks. Excel has an already great system for organizing and separating data – those thousands and thousands of small cells.
It is important to realize that the more often you use the capabilities of cells in your work, the more benefits Excel can get. But if suddenly, you desperately want to add a line break in Excel, I think it will be nice to know how it’s done.