Excel #### in Text

A

Al Franz

Why do I get a string of "#####" in Excel when I type in a longer text
string in an Excel cell. Using Excel 2007. The strings are not that long
and have had longer.
 
S

~~single~~

I think your data is in there, but it takes up more horizontal space to
display it than the column is wide.
Widen the column and you will probably see the text.
 
D

Dave Peterson

Try formatting the cell as General (not Text).

Al said:
Why do I get a string of "#####" in Excel when I type in a longer text
string in an Excel cell. Using Excel 2007. The strings are not that long
and have had longer.
Click to expand...
 
S

Stewart Gordon

Al said:
Why do I get a string of "#####" in Excel when I type in a longer text
string in an Excel cell. Using Excel 2007. The strings are not that long
and have had longer.
Click to expand...

The other replies don't really explain what's going on.

Text strings don't normally generate hashes when they are too long for
the cell, but numbers and dates do. So this suggests to me that Excel
has read your text as being a date or something along those lines, and
so treated it as one.

If you want to force Excel to treat something as a text string even if
it appears to be a number or a date, you can either:
- prefix it with an apostrophe when entering it into the cell
- set the cell's number format to Text before entering the data into it.

Stewart.
 
D

Dave Peterson

Text strings that are between 255 and 1024 characters long in a cell formatted
as text will display those ### signs--at least in xl97-xl2003.
 
D

Dave Peterson

Yes.


These don't work for me. The cell is set to wrap, and no matter how high I
make it, it still appears as #s. I can "fix" it by setting it to format as
"General" but is that an optimal solution?
-Rob
Click to expand...
 
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