Wrapping in Excel (fitting many lines of text in cell to print rig

[Guest]

Help! I'd say I'm intermed. user but I'm stumped on this one (unless it's
just now working right?)
Desparately need this report for tomorrow. Report has numerical data,
calculations AND text (reason it's not just a word file). I don't know
Access, so forget that. Anyway... Text portion is massive and I can't get
the cells to show all the lines on screen or to print. When I click directly
on the worst examples, the entire screen is covered with the data on a pop
up-type screen that overlays the spreadsheet to show it all. (idea:
copy/paste this entire posting 5x in a single cell on a spreadsheet, you
might have the same amt of text .) The most I can see is 7 lines of it, but
some cells even have up to 24 lines , no matter what I try.** I just tried
changing from general to text on the first format tab for another exercise in
futility. I even tried manully widening by double-clicking under row #'s and
nothing happened, so I dragged cell down to make row height increase and it
just stretched cell and either double-spaced the visible text, or threw a
bunch of space above or below text (depending upon whether I had chosen top,
bottom, justify, etc. on align tab). I checked autofit using entire
spreadsheet to no avail
**I've tried EVERYTHING in format, cell, align (horizontal and vertical,
wrap text, trying it with and without checking the "merge cells" box) and
formatting entire sheet for autofit row height. Also: Col's are widest
possible, printing setup for landscape, margins narrowed to smallest and
using small fonts to free up space for column width - I'm still sunk. Please
- help! Thanks so much. - Iris S.

 

[jallen1788]

to make this task a little easier on yourself, i have a few tips.

when you click on the 'massively filled with text' cell, the formul
bar is popping up, taking over the screen. to temporarily disable thi
feature, click on
View > Formula Bar
to uncheck this option. now when you click on the cell, it will no
show up.

my second idea would be to go into page setup, and select the optio
that says
Fit to 1 page wide by 1 page tall
also, you could change the number of pages wide by tall if youd like.

hope this helps

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your suggestions. The first one worked great - no more text
taking over entire screen. Second one won't work (text will become 14% of
original size and illegible, but thanks. I have done that in past). Now,
only problem is getting those pesky full cells to reveal their entire
multi-line contents for viewing and printing. Any additional suggestions are
appreciated. I'll check back a little later or in am. Thanks so much!

 

[Gord Dibben]

Guitris

Excel Help on "limits" or "specifications" reveals that Excel will allow
32,767 characters to be entered in a cell.

However, it goes on to state that "only 1024 characters will be visible or can
be printed"

To work around this limitation, stick a few ALT + ENTERs in at appropriate
spots.

The ALT + ENTER forces a line-feed and expands the 1024 limit.

How far is not really known. Just experiment.

Failing that, use a Text Box to store the text.

Gord Dibben Excel MVP

 

[hd3017]

I know it is too late to help you, GUITRIS. But one of the user in the
company had the same situation as you while she type a whole bunch of
text in one cell on many lines (using alt +enter), the format is text,
and tried to resize the cell left,right,up,down already, but still
couldn't display all of the text in the cell, and it will only display
#### in the cell. Then out of luck, I tried to use special as the
format for the cell, and it display all the text that was enter in the
cell, no matter how many lines.

Even it is too late to help you, GUITRIS. But I hope it will help
others that will have this situation in future. Because it took quite
awhile for me to find this solution out. Best of luck!!!

 

[Dave Peterson]

Even formatting as General would work.

I know it is too late to help you, GUITRIS. But one of the user in the
company had the same situation as you while she type a whole bunch of
text in one cell on many lines (using alt +enter), the format is text,
and tried to resize the cell left,right,up,down already, but still
couldn't display all of the text in the cell, and it will only display
#### in the cell. Then out of luck, I tried to use special as the
format for the cell, and it display all the text that was enter in the
cell, no matter how many lines.

Even it is too late to help you, GUITRIS. But I hope it will help
others that will have this situation in future. Because it took quite
awhile for me to find this solution out. Best of luck!!!

 

[hd3017]

Actually, after your reply. I tried it out, but actually almost an
other type of format display all the text in the cell! "Even dat
format!!!" Thank you

 

[Dave Peterson]

Excel has trouble displaying strings that are between 255 and 1024 characters
long in cells formatted as text. Only MS knows for sure why.