Pound (#) signs instead of text

[Guest]

I entered text in a cell that is formatted for text and wrap. When I hit
enter it shows as pound signs. I've tried making the cell wider and taller
but that didn't help. I used the format brush to copy the format down from
the cell above...still doesn't work.

 

[Guest]

If you select the cell, does the text show up in the formula bar?

 

[Guest]

The text does show up in the formula bar.

If you select the cell, does the text show up in the formula bar?

 

[Guest]

Take an un-used cell and first format it as text and make sure that all of
the cells to the right of the un-used are empty.

Then copy the problem cell into the un-used cell. What happens?

 

[Guest]

Still the same thing. I can see the text in the format bar but in the cell
it's still #.

 

[Guest]

O.K.then...

Select one of the cells. In the formula bar, click on the very beginning of
the text, before the first character. Insert a single apostrophy ' . The
first character should be the apostrophy. Then touch enter. What happens??

 

[Guest]

It didn't make a difference.

O.K.then...

Select one of the cells. In the formula bar, click on the very beginning of
the text, before the first character. Insert a single apostrophy ' . The
first character should be the apostrophy. Then touch enter. What happens??

 

[Guest]

Have patience.

Some versions of Excel have a problem with text strings between 256 and 1024.

First save your workbook. Then edit the cell to progressively shorten it.
We need to make text that does work first.

 

[Guest]

It didn't make a difference. It's weird, because some of the cells have way
more text in them than this cell. And I made the cells the same size.

 

[Guest]

This is actually good
1. locate a good text cell, copy it
2. paste it into a cell having pound problems
3. hopefully, the pound cell should now match the "good" cell
4. from the formula bar, back out the copied text and then enter the desired
text

 

[Dave Peterson]

Format the cell as General.

I entered text in a cell that is formatted for text and wrap. When I hit
enter it shows as pound signs. I've tried making the cell wider and taller
but that didn't help. I used the format brush to copy the format down from
the cell above...still doesn't work.

 

[Guest]

I tried that one and it didn't fix the problem. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Guest]

Thanks. It worked.

This is actually good
1. locate a good text cell, copy it
2. paste it into a cell having pound problems
3. hopefully, the pound cell should now match the "good" cell
4. from the formula bar, back out the copied text and then enter the desired
text

 

[Guest]

Dave:

Even though we were able to solve to OP's problem by trail and error. I
still don't know what actually caused the mis-behavior in the first place!

 

[Dave Peterson]

I wonder if mommyo copied a cell that was formatted as General and pasted over
that troublesome cell--changing it to general.

(I don't recall ever seeing formatting the cell as general not work when the
problem is too long of text in the cell.)

But glad you guys have it worked out.

 

[Guest]

The cell already contained text and you could read it. I just went into edit
mode to change a few things and when I hit enter the cell showed x's.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I don't mean what the cell contains. I mean how the cell is formatted.

Format|cells|number tab|General.

The cell already contained text and you could read it. I just went into edit
mode to change a few things and when I hit enter the cell showed x's.