How to Divide an Excel Cell Diagonally (Insert Diagonal Line)

You may occasionally need to divide a cell diagonally while using Excel to work with data and create reports or dashboards.

When you wish to display two different heads in the same cell, one for the row and one for the column, this is useful (as shown below in cell A1).

And because Excel is a very fantastic spreadsheet program, it has a built-in feature that makes inserting a diagonal line into a cell simple.

I’ll demonstrate how to easily divide a cell diagonally in Excel in this lesson.

Then let’s get going!

Excel Inserting a Diagonal Line

Consider the following data set, and you wish to place a diagonal line in cell A1.

The procedures are as follows:

Choose the cell where you wish to add the line (which is cell A1 in our example)
On the Home tab, click

Click on the dialogue box launcher icon in the Font group (the small, tilted arrow at the bottom right of the group)

Select the “Border” tab in the Format cells dialogue box.

Click on the diagonal line icon in the Border section’s bottom right corner (as shown below). Additionally, this will provide a live preview of the cell’s appearance.

Press “OK”

By following the steps above, a diagonal line would be inserted inside the chosen cell. If more than one cell is selected, the diagonal line would be inserted into each of those cells.

The line that is added can also be modified.

You may decide the line’s color or thickness, for instance, before it is injected into the cell. The setting is present in the border group of the format cells dialogue box (as highlighted below).

Click on the diagonal border icon after making the Style and Color selections (if necessary).

A similar technique may be used to add a diagonal line in cells that have been combined.

Now that the diagonal line is in the cell, all you need to do is enter the text for the two headers and give it a little breathing room to appear as though the tilting line separates them.

Consider the scenario where I want to place the headers “Month” at the top and “Country” at the bottom in the same cell.

The procedures are as follows:

Choose the cell where the diagonal line is already present.
To enter the edit mode, either double-click the cell or hit the F2 key on your keyboard.
‘Month’ should be typed in (which is the header title for the first row)

Hold the ALT key down while pressing the Enter key (or Option + Enter on a Mac) when in edit mode. By doing so, you may add a line break and move your pointer to the following line inside the same cell.
Add the word “Country” here (which is the header title for the first column)

Increase the row height, bold the text, align it to the left, and/or add additional space characters before the ‘Month’ header to move it a bit to the right.