Chapter 2: Entering and Editing Worksheet Data
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■ (^) Edit your text to make it shorter.
■ Increase the width of the column (drag the border in the column letter display).
■ (^) Use a smaller font.
■ Wrap the text within the cell so that it occupies more than one line. Choose
Home ➪ Alignment ➪ Wrap Text to toggle wrapping on and off for the selected
cell or range.
Using Enter mode
The left side of Excel’s status bar normally displays “Ready,” indicating that Excel is ready
for you to enter or edit the worksheet. If you start typing numbers or text in a cell, the
status bar changes to display “Enter” to indicate you’re in Enter mode. The most common
modes for Excel to be in are Ready, Enter, and Edit. See “Modifying Cell Contents” later in
this chapter for more information about Edit mode.
In Enter mode, you are actively entering something into a cell. As you type, the text shows
in the cell and in the Formula bar. You haven’t actually changed the contents of the cell
until you leave Enter mode, which commits the value to the cell. To leave Enter mode, you
can press Enter, Tab, or just about any navigation key on your keyboard (like PageUp or
Home). The value you typed is committed to the cell, and the status bar changes back to
say “Ready.”
You can also leave Enter mode by pressing the Esc key. Pressing Esc ignores your changes
and returns the cell to its previous value.
Entering Dates and Times into Your Worksheets
Excel treats dates and times as special types of numeric values. Dates and times are values
that are formatted so that they appear as dates or times. If you work with dates and times,
you need to understand Excel’s date and time system.
Entering date values
Excel handles dates by using a serial number system. The earliest date that Excel under-
stands is January 1, 1900. This date has a serial number of 1. January 2, 1900, has a serial
number of 2, and so on. This system makes it easy to deal with dates in formulas. For exam-
ple, you can enter a formula to calculate the number of days between two dates.
Most of the time, you don’t have to be concerned with Excel’s serial number date system.
You can simply enter a date in a common date format, and Excel takes care of the details
behind the scenes. For example, if you need to enter June 1, 2019, you can enter the date
by typing June 1, 2019 (or use any of several different date formats). Excel interprets your
entry and stores the value 43617 , which is the serial number for that date.