How to use Excel as a word processor. This episode again covers the Edit - Fill - Justify command, but also shows off the cool ability to create a two column text box in Excel 2007. Episode 408 shows you how.
This blog is the video netcast companion to the upcoming book, Excel 2007 Miracles Made Easy. Download a new two minute video every Tuesday and Thursday to learn one of the tips from the book!
This blog is the video netcast companion to the upcoming book, Excel 2007 Miracles Made Easy. Download a new two minute video every Tuesday and Thursday to learn one of the tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel podcast, I'm Bill Jelen.
It’s another 2007 Thursday, we're going to talk about one of the great new features in Excel 2007.
This trick has actually been around in Excel 2003 is how to use Excel as a word processor.
If we have a lot of text, maybe boilerplate that we need to fit down at the bottom of a report, and we need to justify that to fit a certain number of columns, we can use the Edit, Fill, Justify command.
So what you do is you basically select your text, and however many columns you want it to be, plus many extra rows, so that way Excel has room to spill the text into more rows.
Now in Excel 2003, you would choose Edit, Fill, Justify, in Excel 2007, it's on the Home ribbon, over in the Editing command, and then in the Fill drop-down the Justify command is there, and there, it made it fit to columns A:E.
Now the problem is, though, if we make column E wider later, then we're going to have to use Edit, Fill, Justify again.
A better way to go, and they really improve this in Excel 2007, is the Text Box function.
If you go to the Insert ribbon, there's an option there for Text Box, you can choose Text Box, and basically draw a text box that runs from column A:E, I like it pretty wide.
And then inside the textbox you can paste your text, but here's the cool thing that's brand-new in Excel 2007.
If you right-click and choose Format Shape, there's a Text Box category, we can say that we want to have 2 columns, so I can set up a 2-column textbox, click OK, click Close.
And now basically, they'll take my boilerplate text, and make it be able to make it flow within 2 columns.
OK, now some other settings you can do in the textbox.
If you right-click and choose Format Shape, you can turn off the line.
You can say that there's No line, so that way it'll appear that it's just text floating above your cells.
And the other important setting that you want to do is to right-click and say Size and Properties, where on the Properties tab that you want to “Move and size with cells”.
That way, as your cells actually extend, I’ll extend column D here, my text box automatically gets wider, and so I don't have to go back through and use Edit, Fill, Justify again.
I love the 2-column feature here, of course, we've had that in Word forever, something we were never able to do in Excel.
So a great addition to Excel 2007 is the text box feature.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another podcast from MrExcel!
It’s another 2007 Thursday, we're going to talk about one of the great new features in Excel 2007.
This trick has actually been around in Excel 2003 is how to use Excel as a word processor.
If we have a lot of text, maybe boilerplate that we need to fit down at the bottom of a report, and we need to justify that to fit a certain number of columns, we can use the Edit, Fill, Justify command.
So what you do is you basically select your text, and however many columns you want it to be, plus many extra rows, so that way Excel has room to spill the text into more rows.
Now in Excel 2003, you would choose Edit, Fill, Justify, in Excel 2007, it's on the Home ribbon, over in the Editing command, and then in the Fill drop-down the Justify command is there, and there, it made it fit to columns A:E.
Now the problem is, though, if we make column E wider later, then we're going to have to use Edit, Fill, Justify again.
A better way to go, and they really improve this in Excel 2007, is the Text Box function.
If you go to the Insert ribbon, there's an option there for Text Box, you can choose Text Box, and basically draw a text box that runs from column A:E, I like it pretty wide.
And then inside the textbox you can paste your text, but here's the cool thing that's brand-new in Excel 2007.
If you right-click and choose Format Shape, there's a Text Box category, we can say that we want to have 2 columns, so I can set up a 2-column textbox, click OK, click Close.
And now basically, they'll take my boilerplate text, and make it be able to make it flow within 2 columns.
OK, now some other settings you can do in the textbox.
If you right-click and choose Format Shape, you can turn off the line.
You can say that there's No line, so that way it'll appear that it's just text floating above your cells.
And the other important setting that you want to do is to right-click and say Size and Properties, where on the Properties tab that you want to “Move and size with cells”.
That way, as your cells actually extend, I’ll extend column D here, my text box automatically gets wider, and so I don't have to go back through and use Edit, Fill, Justify again.
I love the 2-column feature here, of course, we've had that in Word forever, something we were never able to do in Excel.
So a great addition to Excel 2007 is the text box feature.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another podcast from MrExcel!
