Displaying data that's longer than cells are wide

Quick question: doing a project where I need to copy looooong items into
small cells. Is there any way I can get Excel to only display the part
that will fit in the cell? As it is, the data (text) spills out over
adjoining cells, making it difficult to see which cells to the right of
the one I'm currently working on are blank. (The data is *contained*
within one cell, I know that: it's the display I'm concerned with here.)
Any way to deal with this?

And no, I don't want to (can't, actually) resize the cells. They must
remain their present size.

David, when you say "remain their present size" do you mean width OR height?

If it is width, I can't help you, if it is height, just click on FORMAT,
CELLS, ALIGNMENT, WRAP TEXT then adjust the cells to your desired height and
width .

Gilles
"David Nebenzahl" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:%[email protected]...
> Quick question: doing a project where I need to copy looooong items into
> small cells. Is there any way I can get Excel to only display the part
> that will fit in the cell? As it is, the data (text) spills out over
> adjoining cells, making it difficult to see which cells to the right of
> the one I'm currently working on are blank. (The data is *contained*
> within one cell, I know that: it's the display I'm concerned with here.)
> Any way to deal with this?
>
> And no, I don't want to (can't, actually) resize the cells. They must
> remain their present size.

David Nebenzahl wrote:
> Quick question: doing a project where I need to copy looooong items into
> small cells. Is there any way I can get Excel to only display the part
> that will fit in the cell? As it is, the data (text) spills out over
> adjoining cells, making it difficult to see which cells to the right of
> the one I'm currently working on are blank. (The data is *contained*
> within one cell, I know that: it's the display I'm concerned with here.)
> Any way to deal with this?
>
> And no, I don't want to (can't, actually) resize the cells. They must
> remain their present size.
Can you insert a narrow column to the right of the one with the long
text and fill the column with single spaces?

Bill

Gilles Desjardins spake thus:

> David, when you say "remain their present size" do you mean width OR height?
>
> If it is width, I can't help you, if it is height, just click on FORMAT,
> CELLS, ALIGNMENT, WRAP TEXT then adjust the cells to your desired height and
> width .

No, as I explained in my question, I can't change the size of the cells
at all. I'm just trying to avoid this annoying display behavior. Guess I
can't do anything about it.

> "David Nebenzahl" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:%[email protected]...
>
>>Quick question: doing a project where I need to copy looooong items into
>>small cells. Is there any way I can get Excel to only display the part
>>that will fit in the cell? As it is, the data (text) spills out over
>>adjoining cells, making it difficult to see which cells to the right of
>>the one I'm currently working on are blank. (The data is *contained*
>>within one cell, I know that: it's the display I'm concerned with here.)
>>Any way to deal with this?
>>
>>And no, I don't want to (can't, actually) resize the cells. They must
>>remain their present size.

Bill Sharpe spake thus:

> David Nebenzahl wrote:
>
>> Quick question: doing a project where I need to copy looooong items
>> into small cells. Is there any way I can get Excel to only display the
>> part that will fit in the cell? As it is, the data (text) spills out
>> over adjoining cells, making it difficult to see which cells to the
>> right of the one I'm currently working on are blank. (The data is
>> *contained* within one cell, I know that: it's the display I'm
>> concerned with here.) Any way to deal with this?
>>
>> And no, I don't want to (can't, actually) resize the cells. They must
>> remain their present size.
>
> Can you insert a narrow column to the right of the one with the long
> text and fill the column with single spaces?

No can do. And how would this help anyhow?

David Nebenzahl spake thus:

> Quick question: doing a project where I need to copy looooong items into
> small cells. Is there any way I can get Excel to only display the part
> that will fit in the cell? As it is, the data (text) spills out over
> adjoining cells, making it difficult to see which cells to the right of
> the one I'm currently working on are blank. (The data is *contained*
> within one cell, I know that: it's the display I'm concerned with here.)
> Any way to deal with this?
>
> And no, I don't want to (can't, actually) resize the cells. They must
> remain their present size.

Following up my own question, I found a work-around: not perfect, but it
does help a lot. What I was doing was pasting in values (long text
items) from one worksheet to another. What I ended up doing was
reformatting the newly-pasted items to enable text wrapping: it made the
row taller, but it did let me see what was in the cell, and the contents
didn't spill out over the next adjacent cell. Then when I was all done
with the row, I disabled text wrapping for all the copied-in cells,
which is the way the finished worksheet is supposed to be.

David Nebenzahl wrote:
> Bill Sharpe spake thus:
>> Can you insert a narrow column to the right of the one with the long
>> text and fill the column with single spaces?
>
>
> No can do. And how would this help anyhow?
If the adjacent cell isn't blank -- I suggested putting a space
character in it -- then the current cell's contents won't spill over
into the next cell.

Bill