Excel – Too much text for an Excel cell — how to make the cell scrollable

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What do I do when I have more text in an Excel cell than I want to show in the allocated space?

Something making it "scrollable" would be preferred.

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Best Answer

You should create an Active-X text box in the cell and edit some of it's settings to enable the scrolling/wrapping/multi-line features. I got this answer from this MrExcel.com forum post:

My first thought would be to place a texbox in the cell, set MultiLine=True, WordWrap=True, EnterKeyBehavior=True, ScrollBars=fmScrollBarsVertical. Size the textbox to the same dimensions as the cell.

  1. Turn on Developer Options: Click the Microsoft Office Button at the top left, and click "Excel Options" (next to Exit Excel). Enable "Show Developer Tab in the Ribbon" and click okay. Excel OptionsDev Mode
  2. Click the Developer Tab. Under the Controls section, click Insert, and under the Active-X section, choose the Text Box (it looks like ab|). add text box

  3. On the main worksheet, click-drag the area where you want to place the text box.

  4. Ensure Design Mode is enabled and click Properties. Click properties

  5. Set EnterKeyBehavior, MultiLine, and WordWrap to True. Set ScrollBars to 2 - fmScrollBarsVertical. Set properties
  6. Disable Design Mode, and enter your text. Enter Text

Hope this helps!

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