Text not recognised as text...

lumish · #1 07-21-2009, 07:08 AM

Hi everyone,
I have this issue with text which I copied from a secure internet site. The text looks as though it pasted into my excel spreedsheet properly; I could manipulate it like normal text. However, when double clicking the row height to reduce/increase to the right height, the height could change but it sometimes left a space where there was no text.

I then went to check the format of the text and it was presented as 'General' but in the sample box '#############' was shown instead of the text. I then tried to change the format to 'Text' but when I pressed enter it then changed the cell to show '###########' instead of the text that was there before.

Can anyone out there help me with what I can do to convert whatever the format of text I have at the moment into an Excel recognised text?

Thanks,
lumish

martindwilson · #2 07-21-2009, 09:10 AM

need to see a sample

romperstomper · #3 07-22-2009, 10:09 AM

Text does not need to be explicitly formatted as Text and in fact, if you do format the cell as Text and the text is between 255 and 1024 characters long, the cell will display ###### as you found (longer or shorter will display OK).
If you copy and paste from the internet you will get all sorts of interesting characters in the text like chr(160) (a non-breaking space).

shg · #4 07-22-2009, 11:11 AM

Quote:

and the text is between 255 and 1024 characters long, the cell will display ######

256 and 1024, I think, Stomper. And in Excel 2007, its 256+.

romperstomper · #5 07-22-2009, 11:20 AM

I have a unique interpretation of the word 'between'.

(you are of course quite correct)
I'm still trying to ignore the existence of 2007...

lumish · #6 07-22-2009, 11:59 AM

Ahh... I see... I played around with the text a bit and you're both perfectly right!! Thanks!

shg · #7 07-22-2009, 12:23 PM

Quote:

I'm still trying to ignore the existence of 2007...

martindwilson only just recently moved from Excel 97; we had great fun ragging him about the teletype he probably used to receive email and his 4" floppies.

In 2015, I'll be Martin, still using Excel 2003 unless physically beaten.