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Why can I not directly edit text I have selected in a cell and change its properties on Excel for iPad?

Anonymous
2025-05-30T05:46:31+00:00

My iPad 9th gen is up to date with IOS 18.5, and I have the most current version of Excel installed. I am very new to this program and have a seemingly specific question that I have been able to find absolutely no answers to online. I sent a copy of a Google sheets document into Excel, and everything seemed to have transfered just fine from one program to the other, except for one very small detail—I want to be able to edit the properties of text I have selected within a cell, but when I edit the cell and select only the text I want to change I am unable to change the text size, font, color, or styling i.e bold or italics.

In the attached image you can see that when I have selected just the text that I would like to edit all options for me to edit the text’s properties are greyed out and not usable. The reason I want to do this is because I am designing a daily schedule for the business I work for, and I was hoping to be able to edit text freely as to add some elements of design to make certain words or sentences stand out, and would like to keep these design elements contained within their individual cells as much as I can. Please let me know if there is in fact a way for me to freely edit text within cells.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | Other | iOS

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-05-30T15:56:18+00:00

    Hello James,

    Thank you for posting this issue on community forum. Excel on iPad works differently than the desktop version, and unfortunately, formatting text within individual parts of a single cell isn't supported on iPad. When you select text inside a cell, Excel treats the entire cell as a unit, so any formatting applies to the whole cell, not just selected words. A workaround would be to use separate cells for differently formatted text or to create a design using merged cells and different font styles. Another option is to format your schedule in Word or PowerPoint, where text styling within a section is more flexible, and then insert it into Excel as an image if needed. If you're working on a desktop version of Excel, formatting individual parts of text within a cell is possible using the format toolbar.

    There's no way to manually unlock this on an iPad, as it's just a limitation of the mobile version.

    If you want to know more about Excel formatting refer to this link: Excel formatting basics. Hope this helps. Sincerely,Walter White | Microsoft Community Moderator

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