How to Add New Line in a Cell in Excel (Line Break)

To start or insert a new line within a cell in Excel, there are multiple ways that you can use. But the easiest one is to use the keyboard shortcut Alt + Enter that you can use while entering values, and apart from that there are ways that you can use it with a formula, like, TEXTJOIN and CONCATENATE.

In this tutorial, we will look at all these methods and you can choose any of these according to your need.

Steps a Start a New Line in Excel in a Cell (Manually)

In the following example, I want to add my name to cell A1, but I want to add my last name to a new line inside the cell only. So let’s use the following steps for this:

1. The first thing that you need to do is to edit the cell and enter the first value by normally typing it.
   
2. After that, you need to press and hold the ALT key from your keyboard.
3. Next, you need to press the enter key while pressing and holding the ALT key. This will move your cursor to the new line.
   
4. Now, you can enter the last name in the second line, just by typing it.
   
5. In the end, hit enter to come out of the edit cell mode.
   

So here you have a cell where you have a value in the new line (second line) within the cell.

But there is one thing that you need to know when you insert a new line in the cell using the keyboard shortcut, Excel activates the wrap text for that cell automatically.

Now if you remove this wrap text formatting from the cell, this will also remove the new line from the cell that you have added while entering the values.

Formula to Add a New Line in a Cell in Excel

If you need to insert a new line in multiple cells in a single go, the best way is to use a formula. In the following example, you have first and last names in columns A and B.

Now, you need to CONCATENATE both to get the full name in column C. And here you also need to use the CHAR function to enter a new line within the cell.

1. The first thing is to enter the concatenate function in cell C2.
2. After that, in the first argument, refer to cell A2 where you have the first name.
3. Next, in the second argument enter the CHAR function and use 10 as the argument value.
4. From here, in the third argument, refer to cell B2 where you have the last name.
5. Now, hit the enter key and apply this formula to all the names that you have in the column.
6. In the end, to get the line break, you need to apply wrap text to the entire column C.

=CONCATENATE(A2,CHAR(10),B2)

In the same way, you can use the TEXTJOIN as well which also helps you to combine two values from the cell, and then using the CHAR function you can add a new line (line break) within the cell.

=TEXTJOIN(CHAR(10),TRUE,A2:B2)

Once you create a formula using TEXTJOIN and CHAR, you also need to apply the wrap text formatting to the cell, so that it shows both values in two different lines using a line break.

Named Range Trick to Insert a New Line in a Cell

You can also create a named range in Excel and add a CHAR function inside that named range. Go to the Formula Tab ⇢ Name Manager ⇢ New.

Now, if you want to add a new line in a cell while combining two values you can simply use a formula like the one below.

In this method, you also need to apply wrap text to the cell to get the second value in the new line.