Problem of Truncation on Excel 2003

E

Elsa

When I open a spreadsheet (saved on an earlier version of
Excel) in Excel 2003, the "cell wrapped" cells lose most
of the ending information, as if there were some sort of
limit on the amount of data to be stored.

The spreadsheet in question has links, which I do NOT want
updated. I have been working with Excel for as many years
as it has existed, therefore you may consider I am not
making a mistake.

We need this problem fixed ASAP.
 
E

Elsa

Additional information:

Just discovered that the problem is in the handling of
MERGED cells. Only the first cell of the merged group is
kept intact. The other cells are lost. Their contents can
be momentarily seen until the "Don't Update" selection is
chosen. Once it is, the MERGED cells are lost.
 
A

AlfD

Hi!

I haven't encountered anything like this, but I wonder: are you losin
the text or losing the formatting (and hence losing sight of th
text)?

Al
 
E

Elsa

Alf,

Thanks for answering. I lose BOTH the formatting and the
text. It is a "linked" cell to another spreadsheet and
once I say "DO NOT UPDATE." The format is no longer
merged. I cannot retrieve the text itself (after I said DO
NOT UPDATE). The fun thing is that it also loses both text
and format if I say "UPDATE."

It will save the information (albeit not the format) if I
save it as "value" with the actual text imbedded.

I have tried to reformat the cell after the spreadsheet
opens, but it cannot expand the text by then. Remember
that it was "linked" information, placed on a "merged"
cell -- it's too late!

Excel 95 created the sheet. It made its way through Excel
XP without trouble, but regardless of version in which we
save it, the information is gone when it's opened in 2000
or later!
 
D

Dave Peterson

I was confused about the merged cell business--do you really mean merged cells
(as in Format|Cell|Alignment tab|Merge cells)???

IIRC, xl97 added merged cells. So if you're saving in xl95, I think you're
going to have trouble with merged cells in later versions.

It sounds like you mean formulas that link to another workbook.

If you have a link to a workbook, you can return lots of characters. But if you
close that workbook and recalculate, then the max number of characters that can
be returned is 255.

And (this is the part that's driving you nutso), newer versions of excel like to
recalculate when the workbook was saved in an earlier version.

Maybe you could open the workbook that's linked, and save your workbook--inside
xl2003. Then close things up and test it out.

If you're lucky, then xl2003 should see that workbook as an xl2003 workbook and
not want to recalculate--so that when you answer "No" to update links, excel
won't return an error value.

If that doesn't work, Jim Rech posted a registry tweak:
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

It'll stop excel from recalculating workbooks that were created in earlier
versions when you open them.
 
E

Elsa

Dave:

I got tired of looking for my original post in Page 41, so
I posted a response to you in Page 1 of the newsgroup.

However, the cells are truly MERGED cells which contain
text retrieved from several (over 50) external workbooks
that are linked to this one.

If you have any ideas, post them in the latter Page,
please.

Thanks, Elsa
 
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