Use a linebreak in Excel on Mac

Sometimes you need a linebreak in an Excel spreadsheet cell, but when you hit return or enter it always jumps you to a new cell. On Windows, you can just hit alt-return (or maybe alt-enter; if one doesn’t work, try the other). On Mac, you’ll need to hit control-option-return.

Took me a while to figure this out, and I figured it could be useful for others. Enjoy!

20 Responses

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  1. I. says...

    Cool! Thanks for the tip. I was searching the help section and amazingly enough I didn’t find anything!

  2. Ian Beck says...

    If they put that kind of info in the help, then anyone might be able to use the program. :-)

  3. Rob says...

    Thanks, it definitely helped me!

  4. Mike says...

    Thanks so much. I was just banging my head against my desk trying to figure out why this string didn’t exist. You just saved me about 45 minutes of work-around hell.

  5. margaret francis says...

    thanks! recently switched from PC to mac and the lack of this shortcut was maddening….

  6. Sonia says...

    You’re a lifesaver!

  7. Leigh says...

    Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

  8. Ian Beck says...

    Glad you guys found this useful!

  9. Mikke says...

    Add my voice to the thanks. Though it did give me yet another chance to practice my Port Town Poetry on Excel.

  10. drewvy says...

    Thanks for that one (CTRL+OPTN+ENTER for line break in Excel cell).

    And, I LOVE the “track me like a stalker” bit. Too funny.

    CHEERS,
    Drew

  11. sonja says...

    one more reason I really, really hate ms*ft products. Because of course sometime someone is going to want to put a line break in a cell, but why on earth would they make it either easy or intuitive???

    Thank you for this work around … I was getting ready to throw things, but not my MBP :)

  12. Kate says...

    Glad to have found this, however, on my MacBook keyboard Control+Option+Enter doesn’t work…Command+Option+Enter does!!!

    Cheers,
    Kate

  13. Brent says...

    THANK YOU! This was driving me nuts.

  14. Barry Chertov says...

    Blessings to you, your family and friends for all time!

    Thanks!

  15. Jen says...

    Thank you so much for sharing this! I bookmarked you just in case I ever forget :) Thanks again, you saved me lots of aggravation!

  16. Megs says...

    Thanks, that was a huge help! like you said, you’d think they’d have put that in the help section. Thank goodness for friendly (virtual) neighborhood bloggers!

  17. Pancho L says...

    Thank you very much!! Sometimes you think things like these are going to be really to find out for yourself, but you find yourself pressing every available key with enter and when nothing happens you can get really frustated!!!
    Thanks again!

  18. Jezabel says...

    Thank you so much. I needed to know this for a work project. Now if only you could explain the LOST finale.

  19. vcrmchl says...

    So useful! Much appreciated.

  20. sama says...

    just the thing I was looking for.

    thx!

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