With Excel 2007, Microsoft has introduced a powerful and useful feature called as Tables. One of the advantages of Tables is that you can write legible formulas by using structural references. That means, you can write easy to understand formulas like this,
But, there is a problem. When you write these formula and drag the formula cell sideways to fill remaining cells, Excel changes table column references and thus makes your formulas almost useless.
Well, there is a simple workaround for this problem.
Use copy & paste.
Instead of dragging the cell to fill formulas, you can use copy & paste to fill the formulas. In this case, Excel will preserve all table references while changing the cell references accordingly. See this demo to understand:
Share your Table Tips & Tricks
Ever since I discovered the tables feature in Excel 2007, I have been using them to save time and simplify my work with data. Tables have several useful features that make life simple for analysts and data junkies everywhere.
What about you? Do you use Excel Tables? What are your top table tricks? Please share using comments.
More on Excel Tables
If you are using Excel 2007 or above, I encourage you to learn Excel Tables. They will make your life simpler. Go thru below articles to learn more,
11 Responses to “Use Alt+Enter to get multiple lines in a cell [spreadcheats]”
@Chandoo:
One more useful trick.......
In a column you have no. of data in rows and need to copy in the next row from the previous row, no need to go for the previous rows but entering Alt + down arrow, you will get the list of data, (in asending order), entered in the previous rows...
This is another great tip. I use this all the time to make sense of some *very* long formulas. As soon as the formula is debugged I remove the break.
Great tip Chandoo!
I use this feature often and it has even gotten the, "how did you do that" response.
Thanks!
@Ketan: Alt+down arrow is an awesome tip. I never knew it and now I am using it everyday.
@Jorge, Tony: Agree... 🙂
[...] Day 1: Insert Line Breaks in a Cell [...]
how can we merge a two sheet.
excellent idea. Chandoo you are genious
Hi chandoo,
I have used ctrl+enter to break the cell. But I did not get the result.
Please tell me how can i break the cell in multiple lines.
Hi, Ranveer,
Its not Ctrl+enter to break the cell, use Alt+Enter to make it happen.
hi Chandoo....
how we can use Alt+Enter in multiple rows at the same time please reply hurry i have lot of work and have no time and i m stuck in this. 🙁
Alt+J worked once 🙁
So I found another more reliable way:
=SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(13),"")
Where A2 is the cell that contains the line breaks which the code for it is CHAR(13). It will replace it with whatever inside the ""