Optional hyphen?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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Guest

Does Excel provide an "optional hyphen" feature, like Word? I'm using word
wrap and resizing column widths, and I'd like to avoid having to insert and
delete hyphens by hand as the column widths change.

(The optional hyphen in Word is a special character which is inserted
manually into a word, in order to show Word where to split a word if it needs
to. The optional hyphen is invisible when the word appears on one line.
However, when Word needs to split a word at the end of the line, it becomes
visible like a normal hyphen character.)

Thanks!
 
I don't think you can trust excel to break on a space or a hyphen. If the word
is long enough, you'll see that excel will split in the middle of the word.
 
Eric

As an alternative.

You can use ALT + ENTER to force a line break at a point you want.

This will not be automatic, however.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP
 
Dave Peterson said:
I don't think you can trust excel to break on a space or a
hyphen. If the word
is long enough, you'll see that excel will split in the middle
of the word.
Click to expand...

I don't think that even Word does a very good job on word
division. The rules, not that I can claim to remember them all,
given in the Chicago Press "Manual of Style, 1982" (sections,
6.34 on) are quite complicated. However, here iare some of the
"American System" rules for what they are worth. There are quite
a few more if you are interested.

Words should be divided according to pronunciation.
Division should be made after a vowel.
Two consonants after a vowel are usually split.
If a word looks misleading after division, don't.
 
But MSWord does have a way to stop breaking on any particular hyphen (well, if
you go to the trouble to use that non-breaking hyphen).

Excel doesn't have that (as far as I've seen).
 
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