Excel Format Cells dialog box

The Alignment tab of the Format Cells dialog box (opened by pressing Ctrl+1) contains four sections with options that enable you to control the positioning of the data entries in their cells:

1. Text Alignment to change the horizontal and vertical alignment of the entries in their cells. In addition to the normal left, center, and right horizontal alignment, you have a choice between using left or right indent, filling the cell with the characters in the entry, justifying the characters to fill the width of the cell, and centering the entry across a selection of cells.
   Vertical alignment options include aligning the entries with the top edge of the cells, bottom edge, or centered between the two edges. Or you can wrap the entry on different lines that are either justified between the top and bottom cell edges or evenly distributed between the two.
2. Orientation to reorient the data entries by rotating 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 Arabic whose characters are read in that order.