When you type some text in an Excel cell and press the enter key, the text you entered is displayed aligned to the left. This is the default alignment.
Note the letters "jim" are displayed in the cell on the left side. This may or may not be the alignment you prefer. You may direct Excel to display your text in one of three alignments: left, center, or right.
While there are several ways to adjust the text alignment in cells, we find the alignment buttons to be the easiest (one click!) to use.
If you hover your mouse over the three alignment buttons, a text box will pop up displaying the action taken if the button is clicked. We are sure you can determine the other two alignments from this example.
A word of caution here.....you must FIRST select the cell(s) you wish to have their alignment changed and then click on the correct alignment button.
Numbers are different from text as far as Excel is concerned. Numbers will be aligned right. However, you can change the alignment of cells with numbers using the same alignment buttons. Consider this example:
The numbers in Column D and Column G were entered. The numbers in Column G were aligned in the Center. Note the vertical display of the digits in Column G...the place value of the one's and ten's place are not arranged directly over each other. Since people are used to viewing numbers in a column with the place values lined up over each other, Excel defaults to the right alignment to preserve the expected alignment of numbers in a column.