Part I: Getting Started with Excel
currency symbols when entering values, along with plus signs, minus signs, percent signs,
and commas (to separate thousands). If you precede a value with a minus sign or enclose it
in parentheses, Excel considers it to be a negative number.
Entering text
Entering text into a cell is just as easy as entering a value: activate the cell, type the text,
and then press Enter or a navigation key. A cell can contain a maximum of about 32,000
characters—more than enough to store a typical chapter in this book. Even though a cell
can hold a huge number of characters, you’ll find that it’s not actually possible to display
all of these characters.
If you type an exceptionally long text entry into a cell, the Formula bar may not show all the text. To display more of
the text in the Formula bar, click the bottom of the Formula bar and drag down to increase the height (see Figure
2.2). Also useful is the Ctrl+Shift+U keyboard shortcut. Pressing this key combination toggles the height of the
Formula bar to show either one row or the previous size.
FIGURE 2.2
The Formula bar, expanded in height to show more information in the cell
What happens when you enter text that’s longer than its column’s current width? If the
cells to the immediate right are blank, Excel displays the text in its entirety, appearing to
spill the entry into adjacent cells. If an adjacent cell isn’t blank, Excel displays as much of
the text as possible. (The full text is contained in the cell; it’s just not displayed.) If you
need to display a long text string in a cell that’s adjacent to a nonblank cell, you have a few
choices.
