Use vertical text in Numbers on Mac

You can turn vertical text on or off in text boxes and shapes at any time.

1. Go to the Numbers app on your Mac.

2. Open a spreadsheet, then Control-click the object you want the vertical text in.

3. Choose Turn On Vertical Text.

   If the object already contains text, it becomes vertical and any additional text you add is vertical. If the object didn’t already contain text, any text you add is vertical.

4. To make the text horizontal again, Control-click the object, then choose Turn Off Vertical Text.

You can fit two to four characters horizontally within vertical text. This is useful for writing a few Latin characters, such as numbers, so they can be read from left to right.

1. Go to the Numbers app on your Mac.

2. Open a spreadsheet with vertical text.

   While writing vertical text, select two to four characters you want to rotate.

3. In the Text tab of the Format  sidebar, select , then choose Rotate to Horizontal.

   When editing the horizontal characters, you can make all of the characters bold, italic, and so on, but you can’t edit the individual characters separately.

If you want the horizontal characters to appear vertically again, delete the characters and reenter them.

You can change text to full-width, upright characters.

1. Go to the Numbers app on your Mac.

2. Open a spreadsheet with vertical text, then select the vertical text you want to make full width.

3. In the Numbers menu bar at the top of your screen, choose Edit > Transformations > Make Characters Full Width.

Here are a few things to keep in mind about using vertical text in your spreadsheet:

• If you copy an object that contains vertical text, such as a text box or shape, and then paste it into a Pages, Numbers, or Keynote document, the object appears in the other document with vertical text.

• If a Numbers spreadsheet with vertical text in objects is opened in an older version of Numbers that doesn’t support vertical text, all text appears horizontally.

• Numbers for iCloud can open a read-only image of a spreadsheet with vertical text.