# sign in a cell

I know that when a column is too short for a value (such as a date), the cell
will display all pound signs. I was asked today what causes it to appear in
a cell that is text with wrap text enabled.

Some people I work with asked me this question. According to them, it
doesn't appear to have any rhyme or reason to the display, as there could be
some cells with lots of text and the pound sign does not show, but then some
other cells with less text will display the pound sign. This is all in the
same column with wrap text enabled. To remove the pound sign (from the
screen display), some text needs to be deleted.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Rich

Rich,

Since no one else is answering this, I'll give it a shot. I think that #### has to do with the number format. When it is a special format (anything but the general format) you are going to get the error.

If you want it to go away, you need to go to format cells and change the format to general.

Things like dates automatically default to the date format. So there is nothing you can do other than making the column wider, merging cells, or centering across serveral cell.

I don't know how helpful that was.

It's not really the wraptext that's causing the trouble. It's the format of the
cell.

Excel seems to have trouble with intermediate length text in cells that are
formatted as Text.

Intermediate means between 256 and 1024 characters long.

0-255 and 1025 to 32k work ok.

Tom Ogilvy once suggested a reason--his guess and it seemed pretty reasonable to
me.

Early versions of excel limited cells to 255 (256???) characters per cell.
Current versions allow 32767 characters.

But a formula (current version) can contain only 1024 characters (when measured
in R1C1 reference style).

So somewhere in MS land, there was a disconnect and this "feature" wasn't ever
noticed/corrected.

===
It's a small problem (I think) and if you can show your co-workers how to fix
it, your co-workers will think that you're an excel expert! <vbg>.



Poody wrote:
>
> I know that when a column is too short for a value (such as a date), the cell
> will display all pound signs. I was asked today what causes it to appear in
> a cell that is text with wrap text enabled.
>
> Some people I work with asked me this question. According to them, it
> doesn't appear to have any rhyme or reason to the display, as there could be
> some cells with lots of text and the pound sign does not show, but then some
> other cells with less text will display the pound sign. This is all in the
> same column with wrap text enabled. To remove the pound sign (from the
> screen display), some text needs to be deleted.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich

--

Dave Peterson

Thank you very much - that is great information!

Rich

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

> It's not really the wraptext that's causing the trouble. It's the format of the
> cell.
>
> Excel seems to have trouble with intermediate length text in cells that are
> formatted as Text.
>
> Intermediate means between 256 and 1024 characters long.
>
> 0-255 and 1025 to 32k work ok.
>
> Tom Ogilvy once suggested a reason--his guess and it seemed pretty reasonable to
> me.
>
> Early versions of excel limited cells to 255 (256???) characters per cell.
> Current versions allow 32767 characters.
>
> But a formula (current version) can contain only 1024 characters (when measured
> in R1C1 reference style).
>
> So somewhere in MS land, there was a disconnect and this "feature" wasn't ever
> noticed/corrected.
>
> ===
> It's a small problem (I think) and if you can show your co-workers how to fix
> it, your co-workers will think that you're an excel expert! <vbg>.
>
>
>
> Poody wrote:
> >
> > I know that when a column is too short for a value (such as a date), the cell
> > will display all pound signs. I was asked today what causes it to appear in
> > a cell that is text with wrap text enabled.
> >
> > Some people I work with asked me this question. According to them, it
> > doesn't appear to have any rhyme or reason to the display, as there could be
> > some cells with lots of text and the pound sign does not show, but then some
> > other cells with less text will display the pound sign. This is all in the
> > same column with wrap text enabled. To remove the pound sign (from the
> > screen display), some text needs to be deleted.
> >
> > Any thoughts?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Rich
>
> --
>
> Dave Peterson
>