# signs where there shouldn't be....

D

dramajuana

I have a simple spreadsheet that I've been building on for the past couple
months, and I have a column with dates in it. It's formatted to do the date
as 14-Aug (so that I can enter "8/14" and it changes it for me), but over the
past few days, it's decided to display ##### instead of 14-Aug. When you
double click the darn thing, it shows the date as 8/14/2006 like it always
has, but everything I've tried won't make the pound signs go away when I'm
just viewing the document. Any ideas?

By the way, the document has 238 rows and counting, but I don't think the
length should effect it....
 
D

dramajuana

Oh, and I have another date column right next to this one, and it has no
problem showing the dates correctly.
 
K

Ken Wright

Have you tried widening the column?

--
Regards
Ken....................... Microsoft MVP - Excel
Sys Spec - Win XP Pro / XL 97/00/02/03

------------------------------­------------------------------­----------------
It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission :)
------------------------------­------------------------------­----------------
 
M

MarkM

Check the columns width, it sounds like the column is too narrow to display
the text.
 
D

dramajuana

I have now. I feel stupid. Thanks. (Why the hell does it do that? In some of
my other spreadsheets, it just shrinks the font so that it fits.... oh well.)
 
S

Sloth

"shrink to fit" is an option found in the Alignment Tab of Format Cells.
Normally text will "run over" into the next cell (if empty), but numbers and
dates are different; if there is not enough room, it displays pound signs
instead. I assume this is because the data could easily be misinterpreted.
Also, it is easy to spot that a word has been cut in half, but not a number.
:)
 
Top