Text Data Elements
Text elements consist of an arbitrary sequence of characters or numbers entered into a cell. Because Gnumeric automatically recognizes certain sequences as numbers or formulas, certain sequences of characters (such as sequences containing only digits or a text element which starts with an equals sign) must be treated specially to have them considered text. In order to force any sequence to be considered text, the sequence can be started with an apostrophe symbol ('). Alternatively, the 'number' format of the cell can be specified to be 'text' before entering the characters, as explained in Section 5.10.1 ― Number Formatting Tab. Text elements are the simplest elements to enter into spreadsheet cells.
An example of a spreadsheet cell grid with cells containing text is given in Figure 5-1.
Valid text entries include simple words, whole sentences and even paragraphs.
To include a newline in a cell, a special key combination is required. A newline symbol can be inserted with the key combination of Alt+Enter.