How to indent cell content in Excel

Abstract

Excel provides a simple way to horizontally indent cell content.

Indents work in steps, allowing you to use more than one level of indentation.

Let’s take a look.

Here we have a simple budget worksheet.

Let’s apply some indentation to make the categories a little more readable.

One button increases the indent by one step, and the other button decreases the indent by one step.

Once you reach zero, clicking decrease indent has no further effect.

Because indents can be set in steps, Excel allows you to have multiple levels of indentation.

For example, we can indent all expenses under the Expense category.

And then further indent sub categories under Housing and Transportation.

When text is left-aligned, the indent is from the left edge of the cell.

However, when text is right-aligned, the indent is from the right edge of the cell.

you could also see and set the indent level using the Format Cells dialog box.

The current indent setting is displayed next to the Horizontal alignment menu.

As you might see in the menu, only certain alignment options support indents.

If you switch to an alignment that doesn’t support indents, the indents will be removed.

We can see this same behavior using the buttons on the ribbon.

If we apply an indent to center-aligned text, which doesn’t support indents, it is immediately left-aligned.