Data Validation Pop-downs

[Charlie]

Anyone know what would cause data validation pop-downs to become much wider
than the column width? The list range has not changed. The data in the list
range has not changed. The number of characters of the longest item in the
list still fits into the cell that has the attached pop-down, but now the
pop-down is several columns wider. Until now it has been the same width as
the destination cell.

I've done some sheet formatting, inserted a column, etc. Typical stuff that
I wouldn't expect to have an effect on the pop-downs but, you never know.
It's as if the width of the pop-down has picked up the width of the wrong
column since I did the insert. But it also affected a pop-down to the left
of where I inserted the column.

I've tried removing all data validation on the entire sheet and recreating
them but to no avail.

Has this ever happened to anybody else?

TIA
Charlie

 

[Dave Peterson]

I've seen weird things happen when I use merged cells and data|validation.

Any chance you're using merged cells?

 

[Charlie]

Well, chalk it up to another Excel quirk. I went back two prior versions to
find a copy having the pop-downs the same width as the columns. I deleted
all source code from that version and copied in the source code from the
latest version. I saved and reopened that new book.

Then I began selecting data via pop-downs into the cells on Sheet1 that are
part of lookup tables for Sheet2. The pop-downs on Sheet2 became wide again!
I exited without saving and tried it again. This time checking the
pop-downs on Sheet2 after each and every entry I made on Sheet1. No problems
this time. ??

Maybe I have some garbage data (i.e. embedded special characters) in one of
the data validation lists for Sheet1. I'll check it out. The list in
question is quite large and came from an external source (query).

 

[Charlie]

Yes, I have some merged cells as a header above the range used for validation
(and elsewhere) but not within the actual range. That could be it because I
too have seen some weird things with merged cells. I'll keep an eye on it.
Thanks for the suggestion.

P.S. I looked for special characters in each cell of the list (e.g. vbLF,
etc.) The only thing I found was a few characters with accent marks.
Everything else was alpha-numeric or otherwise printable characters.