cross-hatches appearing in place of text

I'm sure it's something simple, but what's causing a block of teext I'm
copying-and-pasting into a wide cell to turn into cross-hatches?

I've tried setting the alignment to Top and Left, and adjusting the
cell's size, but the text keeps popping up with only a line displaying,
or as the line of cross-hatches.

Kevin

check a) the format for the cell and b) the length of the text in the cell.

First, try setting the format for the cell to General. If the cell is
formatted as Text and has more than 255 characters in it, it will display as
###...###

Regards

Trevor


"Kevin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:ft9Ge.6010$p%[email protected]...
> I'm sure it's something simple, but what's causing a block of teext I'm
> copying-and-pasting into a wide cell to turn into cross-hatches?
>
> I've tried setting the alignment to Top and Left, and adjusting the
> cell's size, but the text keeps popping up with only a line displaying,
> or as the line of cross-hatches.

Are these cross hatches: #####

If yes, then it could mean a few things.

1. The columnwidth is too narrow to show the number.

Widen the column or change the font size of that cell

2. You have a date/time in that cell and it's negative

Don't use negative dates. If excel was helping you, it may have
changed the format to a date. Change it back to General (or some
other number format).

If you need to see negative date/times:
Tools|options|Calculation Tab|and check 1904 date system
(but this can cause trouble--watch what happens to your dates
and watch what happens when you copy|paste dates to a different
workbook that doesn't use this setting)

3. You have a lot of text in the cell, the cell is formatted as Text.

Format the cell as general.

4. You really have ###'s in that cell.

Clean up that cell.

5. You have # in a cell, but it's format is set to Fill.

Change the format
(format|cells|alignment tab|horizontal box, change it to General.

Kevin wrote:
>
> I'm sure it's something simple, but what's causing a block of teext I'm
> copying-and-pasting into a wide cell to turn into cross-hatches?
>
> I've tried setting the alignment to Top and Left, and adjusting the
> cell's size, but the text keeps popping up with only a line displaying,
> or as the line of cross-hatches.

--

Dave Peterson