How to automatically expand formula bar in Excel?

When you select a cell in a worksheet, the contents of this cell will be displayed in the formula bar. By default, the formula bar displays only a single line content, and if the contents are longer than what can be displayed in a single line on the formula bar, the contents of the other lines will be hidden. This step-by-step guide demonstrates two methods to help expand formula bar automatically in Excel so that you can view all contents of the selected cell directly in the formula bar.

Automatically expand formula bar with VBA code
Automatically expand formula bar with an amazing tool

Automatically expand formula bar with VBA code

You can apply the VBA below to expand the Formula Bar automatically when selecting a cell.

1. Open the worksheet where you want to expand the Formula Bar, right click the sheet tab and then click View Code from the right-clicking menu.

2. In the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, copy and paste the following VBA code into the Code window.

VBA code: Automatically expand formula bar

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
    Dim xLen As Long
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
    Application.FormulaBarHeight = 1
    If ActiveCell.HasFormula Then
        xLen = Len(ActiveCell.Formula)
    Else
        xLen = Len(ActiveCell.Value)
    End If
    If xLen > 100 Then
        With Application
            .FormulaBarHeight = .Min(.Ceiling(xLen, 100), 600) / 100
        End With
    End If
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

3. Press Alt + Q keys simultaneously to close the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

From now on, when selecting a cell and the contents are longer than what can be displayed in a single line on the formula bar, the formula bar will be expanded automatically to fit the contents.

Automatically expand formula bar with an amazing tool

Here highly recommend a tool that can completely replace the formula bar in Excel. With the Bigger Formula Bar feature of Kutools for Excel, you can easily view the complete contents of a cell no matter how long it is, and edit the contents at any position as you need.

1. Click Kutools > Bigger Formula Bar to enable this feature.

2. When selecting a cell, an edit window will pop up, you can view the complete contents of that cell or edit it as you need.

Notes:

1) By default, this edit window acts on the whole workbook. You can specify where to display this edit window. For example, you can decide to pop up the window only when you click on cells in range B12:B19 of the current worksheet.

2) If a cell contains a formula, you can decide to display the formula or the result in the edit window.

Click to know more about this feature...

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