Alignment Settings

Configuring Alignment Settings

Alignment settings in Microsoft Excel

Anyone who has used Microsoft Excel to format cells will be familiar with the alignment settings in Microsoft Excel.

As you can see from the above figure, there are different kinds of alignment options:

• Text alignment(horizontal & vertical)
• Indentation.
• Orientation.
• Text control.
• Text direction.

All of these alignment settings are fully supported by Aspose.Cells and are discussed in more detail below.

Alignment settings in Aspose.Cells

Aspose.Cells provides GetStyle and SetStyle methods for the Cell class that are used to get and set a cell’s formatting. The Style class provides useful properties for configuring alignment settings.

Select any text alignment type using the TextAlignmentType enumeration. The pre-defined text alignment types in the TextAlignmentType enumeration are:

Text Alignment Types	Description
Bottom	Represents bottom text alignment
Center	Represents center text alignment
CenterAcross	Represents center across text alignment
Distributed	Represents distributed text alignment
Fill	Represents fill text alignment
General	Represents general text alignment
Justify	Represents justify text alignment
Left	Represents left text alignment
Right	Represents right text alignment
Top	Represents top text alignment
JustifiedLow	Aligns the text with an adjusted kashida length for Arabic text.
ThaiDistributed	Distributes Thai text especially, because each character is treated as a word.

You can also apply the justify distributed setting using the Style.IsJustifyDistributed property.

Horizontal , Vertical Alignment and Indentation

Use the HorizontalAlignment property to align the text horizontally and VerticalAlignment property to align the text vertically. It is possible to set the indentation level of the text in a cell with the IndentLevel property and tt only effects when Horizontal alignment is left or right.

// Instantiating a Workbook object
		Workbook workbook = new Workbook();

		// Obtaining the reference of first worksheet
		Worksheet worksheet = workbook.getWorksheets().get(0);

		// Accessing the "A1" cell from the worksheet
		Cell cell = worksheet.getCells().get("A1");

		// Adding some value to the "A1" cell
		cell.putValue("Visit Aspose!");

		// Setting the horizontal alignment of the text in the "A1" cell
		Style style = cell.getStyle();
		//Set text left horizontal alignment
		style.setHorizontalAlignment(TextAlignmentType.RIGHT);
		//Set indent
	    style.setIndentLevel(4);
		//Set text top vertical alignment
		style.setVerticalAlignment(TextAlignmentType.TOP);
		cell.setStyle(style);

		// Saving the Excel file
		workbook.save("book1.xlsx");

Orientation

Set the orientation (rotation) of the text in a cell with the RotationAngle property.

	// Accessing the "A1" cell from the worksheet
		Cell cell = worksheet.getCells().get("A1");

		// Adding some value to the "A1" cell
		cell.putValue("Visit Aspose!");

		// Setting the horizontal alignment of the text in the "A1" cell
		Style style = cell.getStyle();
		            
		// Setting the rotation of the text (inside the cell) to 25
		style.setRotationAngle(25);

		cell.setStyle(style);
		
		//Accessing the "A2" cell from the worksheet
		 cell = worksheet.getCells().get("A2");

			// Adding some value to the "A1" cell
			cell.putValue("Visit Aspose!");

			// Setting the horizontal alignment of the text in the "A2" cell
			style = cell.getStyle();
			            
			// Setting the orientation of the text from top to bottom
			style.setRotationAngle(255);

			cell.setStyle(style);
		// Saving the Excel file
		workbook.save("book1.xlsx");

Text Control

The following section discusses how to control text by setting text wrapping, shrink to fit and other formatting options.

Wrapping Text

Wrapping text in a cell makes it easier to read: the height of the cell adjusts to fit all the text, instead of cutting it off or spilling over into adjacent cells. Set text wrapping on or off with the IsTextWrapped property.

	// Instantiating a Workbook object
		Workbook workbook = new Workbook();

		// Obtaining the reference of first worksheet
		Worksheet worksheet = workbook.getWorksheets().get(0);

		// Accessing the "A1" cell from the worksheet
		Cell cell = worksheet.getCells().get("A1");

		// Adding some value to the "A1" cell
		cell.putValue("I am using the latest version of Aspose.Cells to test this functionality.");

		// Gets style
		Style style = cell.getStyle();
		  
		// Wrap Cell's Text wrap
		style.setTextWrapped( true);
		//Set style.
			cell.setStyle(style);
		// Saving the Excel file
		workbook.save("book1.xlsx");

Shrinking to Fit

An option to wrapping text in a field is to shrink the text size to fit a cell’s dimensions. This is done by setting the ShrinkToFit property. to true.

		// Instantiating a Workbook object
		Workbook workbook = new Workbook();

		// Obtaining the reference of first worksheet
		Worksheet worksheet = workbook.getWorksheets().get(0);

		// Accessing the "A1" cell from the worksheet
		Cell cell = worksheet.getCells().get("A1");

		// Adding some value to the "A1" cell
		cell.putValue("I am using the latest version of Aspose.Cells to test this functionality.");

		// Gets style in the "A1" cell
		Style style = cell.getStyle();

		// Shrinking the text to fit according to the dimensions of the cell
		style.setShrinkToFit(true);

		cell.setStyle(style);
		
		
		// Saving the Excel file
		workbook.save("book1.xlsx");

Merging Cells

Like Microsoft Excel, Aspose.Cells supports merging several cells into one. Aspose.Cells provides two approaches to this task. One way is to call the Merge method. The method takes the following parameters to merge the cells:

• First row: the first row from where to start merging.
• First column: the first column from where to start merging.
• Number of rows: the number of rows to merge.
• Number of columns: the number of columns to merge.

	// Create a Cells object ot fetch all the cells.
		Cells cells = worksheet.getCells();

		// Merge some Cells (C6:E7) into a single C6 Cell.
		cells.merge(5, 2, 2, 3);

		// Input data into C6 Cell.
		worksheet.getCells().get(5, 2).putValue("This is my value");

		// Create a Style object to fetch the Style of C6 Cell.
		Style style = worksheet.getCells().get(5, 2).getStyle();

		// Create a Font object
		Font font = style.getFont();

		// Set the name.
		font.setName("Times New Roman");

		// Set the font size.
		font.setSize(18);

		// Set the font color
		font.setColor(Color.getBlue());

		// Bold the text
		font.setBold(true);

		// Make it italic
		font.setItalic(true);

		// Set the backgrond color of C6 Cell to Red
		style.setForegroundColor(Color.getRed());
		style.setPattern(BackgroundType.SOLID);

		// Apply the Style to C6 Cell.
		cells.get(5, 2).setStyle(style);
		

Text Direction

It is possible to set the reading order of text in cells. The reading order is the visual order in which characters, words, etc. are displayed. For example, English is a left to right language while Arabic is a right to left language.

The reading order is set with the TextDirection property. Aspose.Cells provides pre-defined text direction types in the TextDirectionType enumeration.

Text Direction Types	Description
Context	The reading order consistent with the language of the first entered character
LeftToRight	Left to right reading order
RightToLeft	Right to left reading order

// Instantiating a Workbook object
		Workbook workbook = new Workbook();

		// Obtaining the reference of first worksheet
		Worksheet worksheet = workbook.getWorksheets().get(0);

		// Accessing the "A1" cell from the worksheet
		Cell cell = worksheet.getCells().get("A1");

		// Adding some value to the "A1" cell
		cell.putValue("I am using the latest version of Aspose.Cells to test this functionality.");

		// Gets style in the "A1" cell
		Style style = cell.getStyle();

		// Shrinking the text to fit according to the dimensions of the cell
		style.setTextDirection(TextDirectionType.LEFT_TO_RIGHT);

		cell.setStyle(style);
		
		
		
		// Saving the Excel file
		workbook.save("book1.xlsx");

Advance topics

• Change Cells Alignment and Keep Existing Formatting
• Line Breaks and Text Wrapping