How to wrap text in Google Sheets

In this post we’re going to see how to wrap text in Google Sheets, how to clip text, and how to just let it overflow, with the help of Nibbles the hamster and some revealing questions for our friends.

Text overflow

Normally, if you write too much in a cell you will see that it overflows into the next cell to the right, as we can see with the title of this diary, which in this case is what I want.

However, I don’t want my hamster’s daily activities to go across all the cells like they currently do, especially as he does like to write quite a bit!

How to wrap text

Let’s make this look better and easier to read. Select the cells you want to wrap.

Then from the toolbar, click on the wrap text icon, the one with a curved arrow to the left of the “A”.

This wraps the text so it stays in the cell, and as a result will flow across a number of lines. Note, I also vertically-aligned the text to the top so that the days of the week are at the top of the cells not the bottom.

How to clip text in cells

This time I have a set of questions for a game with some friends but I don’t want them to see the questions beforehand. So, what I can do is clip the text so only the first part shows, i.e. the text doesn’t overflow into the next cell it’s cut off.

Select the text you want to clip.

Go to the toolbar, click the wrap text icon and select the option on the right to clip the text.

As you can see, we now can only see the starts of the questions, and now my friends will have to click on the cell, to be able to see the question in full as you can see below.

I sometimes use this if I have cells full of long URLs which I don’t need to see completely.

How to let the text overflow across other cells

If you want to return to the default and let the text flow across cells, just select the cell(s), go to the wrap text icon, and select the icon on the left.

Note, if you do have text in a cell that overflows into the one to the right, then write in that cell, the text will be clipped.

Above we can see that if Nibbles adds a daily rating to the cells to the right of his daily notes, they get clipped and we only see what fits in the cell on one line.

Learn more about Google Sheets here or watch some of my quick tips here on YouTube.