How to Justify Text inside a textbox in Excel [4 Methods]

Text boxes serve as a valuable tool for presenting and organizing information in Excel. The need to justify text within these text boxes is often ignored. Justifying text along both the left and right margins allows for a more polished and professional appearance.

The justify formatting option ensures that each line of text extends from one margin to another, eliminating any uneven spacing or awkward gaps. Users can enhance readability and create a more visually appealing presentation by using the justify text feature in an Excel textbox.

Understanding to justify text in an Excel textbox, helps you to effectively present your data clearly and concisely.

In this blog post, you will learn the importance of justifying text in an Excel textbox and study various techniques to apply this formatting in Excel.

You will learn how to use Excel Menu options to justify text in the Excel textbox.  VBA or Office Scripts code to apply to justify text format in your automation.

Justify Text in Excel textbox with Menu Options

You learn how to use Excel menu options to justify text in the Excel Textbox. Justifying text refers to aligning the text evenly along both the left and right margins of the textbox.

Please follow the below steps to justify text in an Excel textbox:

1. Click inside the textbox to activate it for editing, Press Ctrl + A to select all the text in the textbox and Right Mouse Click.
2. Select the option Paragraph in the context menu to open the Paragraph dialog box.

3. Select the option Justified from among various alignment options such as left, right, centered, etc. in the Alignment drop-down in the General Group of the Paragraph dialog box.
4. Press the OK button.

Alternatively, you can use keyboard shortcuts Shift + F10 to open the context menu in Excel and follow steps 2, 3, and 4.

Now you can see the text is aligned with both the left and right margins of the textbox. Keep in mind that justifying only works if there is enough space within each line of your textbox. It may not have any visible effect on shorter lines of text.

Justify Text in Excel textbox with Keyboard

Keyboard shortcuts can help you perform common tasks faster, avoid errors, and access features. It is a great way to improve your productivity and efficiency in Excel.

Here are some of the benefits of using keyboard shortcuts in Excel:

1. Keyboard shortcuts allow you to perform actions with a few keystrokes, instead of moving your mouse and clicking through menus and buttons. This can save you time for each task.
2. Keyboard shortcuts help you avoid accidental clicks, drag-and-drop errors and selecting wrong cells or options.
3. Windows has many features and functions, which are not easily accessible with the mouse or the ribbon.

By following these two steps, you can simply justify your text within an Excel textbox.

1. Select the textbox to apply the formatting.
2. Press Ctrl + J for Justify text in the Excel textbox.

To align your text in different ways, you can use these keyboard shortcuts. Press Ctrl + L to align your text to the left margin. Press Ctrl + R to align your text to the right margin. Press Ctrl + E to align your text to the center of the textbox.

Justify Text in an Excel TextBox using VBA

You can create macros and automate tasks in Excel using VBA. VBA helps you save time, improve accuracy, and customize your work. In this section, you will learn how to write the VBA Code to loop through all the shapes on the current worksheet and justify the text alignment of any non-empty rectangle shape.

Sub LoopThroughObjects()

    ' Declare variables

    Dim ws As Worksheet

    Dim shp As Shape

    Dim txtRange As TextRange2

    ' Assign current worksheet to the variable ws

    Set ws = ActiveSheet

    ' Loop through each shape in the active sheet

    For Each shp In ws.Shapes

        ' Check the auto shape execute only if it is a Rectangle

        If shp.AutoShapeType = msoShapeRectangle Then

            ' Set text frame to the variable txtRange

            Set txtRange = shp.TextFrame2.TextRange

            ' Check the shape has text or not

            If txtRange.Text <> "" Then

                ' Set the justify alignment to the text paragraph

                txtRange.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = msoAlignJustify

            End If

        End If

    Next shp

End Sub

Insert the above code into your VBE module.

To Run the LoopThroughObjects macro in Excel

Select the sheet where your text boxes are placed and need to apply the formatting. Press Alt + F8, the keyboard shortcut to open the Macro dialog box. Choose the LoopThroughObjects Macro in the macro list and then Press Run.

Let me explain how it works step by step

First, you declare three variables: ws as Worksheet, shp as Shape and txtRange as TextRange2. These variables will store the references to the active sheet, current shape and its text range, respectively.

Next, The For Each loop to iterate over all the shapes on the active worksheet. You use the ws.Shapes collection to access all the shapes.

Inside the loop, the macro checks if the current shape equals msoShapeRectangle. This property returns an enumeration value that indicates the type of the shape. If the condition is true, you use the Set statement to assign the current shape’s TextFrame2.TextRange property to the txtRange variable.

Then, macro check If the text range is not empty, it means that the rectangle shape has some text inside it. Finally, you use the txtRange object’s ParagraphFormat.Alignment property to set the text alignment of the text range to msoAlignJustify. msoAlignJustify is one of the possible values that the text is justified on both left and right margins.

After checking and modifying each shape, you use the Next statement to move to the next shape in the collection.

Justify Text in an Excel Textbox using Office Scripts

Office Scripts is a scripting language for Excel that allows you to create and run macros on both desktop and online versions. It helps you to automate repetitive tasks by recording your actions and generating a script. You can also edit the script to customize it for your needs.

function main(workbook: ExcelScript.Workbook) {

    // Get the Active worksheet.

    let currentSheet = workbook.getActiveWorksheet();

    // Get the shapes in this worksheet.

    let autoShapes = currentSheet.getShapes();

    // Loop through each shape in the current worksheet.

    autoShapes.forEach((shape) => {

      // Check the ShapeType and execute only if it is Rectangle

      if (shape.getGeometricShapeType().toString()=="Rectangle"){

        // Assign the textframe to the variable shTxtFrame

        let shTxtFrame = shape.getTextFrame();

        // Check the textframe has text or not

        if (shTxtFrame.getHasText()){

          // Set the horizontal alignemnt 

          shTxtFrame.setHorizontalAlignment(ExcelScript.ShapeTextHorizontalAlignment.justify)

        }

      }   

    });

}

First, the program assigns the value of workbook.getActiveWorksheet() to a variable called currentSheet. This method returns the worksheet that is currently active in the workbook. Next scripts assign the value of currentSheet.getShapes() to a variable called autoShapes. This method returns a collection of shapes that are on the current worksheet. A shape is an object in Excel, which represents a graphical element, such as a line, a circle, or a rectangle.

You use forEach loop to iterate over each shape in the autoShapes collection. The loop takes a function as an argument, which is executed for each shape. The function takes a parameter called shape, which represents the current shape in the iteration.

Inside loop each iteration the script checks the shape has a geometric shape type of Rectangle. If the shape is a Rectangle then the program assigns the value of shape.getTextFrame() to a variable called shpTxtFrame.  A text frame is an object that represents a container for text in a shape.

The script checks whether the text frame has any text or not using the method getHasText() on the shpTxtFrame object, which returns a boolean value TRUE if the text frame contains any text.

Finally, the program sets the horizontal alignment of the text by using the setHorizontalAlignment() method on the shpTxtFrame object. The enum value used here is ShapeTextHorizontalAlignment.justify, which justifies the text in the Excel textbox.

Follow the below steps to execute the Loop Through Excel Objects Office Scripts in your Excel

Go to the Automate menu. Select the Loop Through Excel Objects Script – to open the Code editor on the right side of the Excel window. Press the Run button.

Conclusion

Justified alignment affects word spacing within each line of your content. It is essential for creating visually appealing and professional-looking spreadsheets in data analysis and presentation.

Aligning your text within a textbox involves selecting the appropriate justification option such as left, right, center or justify. You can do a uniform layout that matches the overall style of your spreadsheet by using this feature.

You learned three different methods to justify text in Excel textbox. You can simply use the keyboard shortcut keys to justify text. Excel VBA or Office Scripts code helps you to justify text automatically if you have a number of text boxes in the Excel worksheet or need to apply it in your automation project.

Do you know any other methods that can be used to Justify Text in an Excel textbox? Let me know in the comments section!