loss of text in cells

[Cinderalla]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

anyone know why the text I entered in the cells gets deleted after a certain number of characters? I am using excel to organize information and my spreadsheet keeps lopping off the text in every cell--each at about the same number of characters. This is happening after I have populated text in a large sheet over several hours saving it regularly with no problem. first it happened when I tried to email it as an attachment so I thought that was the issue. But now it did it when I saved it and closed it-when reopened, the problem appeared again. I have tried reformatting and found no help there. I saved a duplicate and both reopened with the same problem. It appears I am losing all my hard work. How do I prevent, stop, and reverse this?

 

[CyberTaz]

It isn't being deleted This has historically been the case in both PC
Excel as well as the Mac version. From Excel Help:

*********************************************
Total number of characters that a cell can contain
32,767 characters (only 1,024 can be displayed in a cell; all 32,767 can be
displayed in the formula bar)
*********************************************
When you select the cell having the content the Editing field of the Formula
Bar will display it. Huge volumes of text in a single cell isn't really what
Excel is designed to handle best. If you don't find this to be the case
please reply back with additional details.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

anyone know why the text I entered in the cells gets deleted after a certain
number of characters? I am using excel to organize information and my
spreadsheet keeps lopping off the text in every cell--each at about the same
number of characters. This is happening after I have populated text in a
large sheet over several hours saving it regularly with no problem. first it
happened when I tried to email it as an attachment so I thought that was the
issue. But now it did it when I saved it and closed it-when reopened, the
problem appeared again. I have tried reformatting and found no help there. I
saved a duplicate and both reopened with the same problem. It appears I am
losing all my hard work. How do I prevent, stop, and reverse this?

Take a look at "Excel Specifications" in Help.

XL cells can normally display and print a maximum of 1024 characters,
even though they can contain up to 32767 characters. All the characters
appear in the Formula Bar.

However, one can get around that limitation if one manually inserts a
line feed (CMD-OPT-RETURN) at least every 1024 characters.

 

[Cinderalla]

Sorry, I did not make it clear that I had already looked at the formula bar and the text truly did disappear. It is not in the formula bar at all.

It isn't being deleted This has historically been the case in both PC

 

[Cinderalla]

Sorry, I did not make it clear that I had already looked at the formula bar and the text truly did disappear. It is not in the formula bar at all.

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

anyone know why the text I entered in the cells gets deleted after a certain
number of characters? I am using excel to organize information and my
spreadsheet keeps lopping off the text in every cell--each at about the same
number of characters. This is happening after I have populated text in a
large sheet over several hours saving it regularly with no problem. first it
happened when I tried to email it as an attachment so I thought that was the
issue. But now it did it when I saved it and closed it-when reopened, the
problem appeared again. I have tried reformatting and found no help there. I
saved a duplicate and both reopened with the same problem. It appears I am
losing all my hard work. How do I prevent, stop, and reverse this?

Take a look at "Excel Specifications" in Help.

XL cells can normally display and print a maximum of 1024 characters,
even though they can contain up to 32767 characters. All the characters
appear in the Formula Bar.

However, one can get around that limitation if one manually inserts a
line feed (CMD-OPT-RETURN) at least every 1024 characters.
[/QUOTE]

 

[Cinderalla]

Sorry, I did not make it clear that I had already looked at the formula bar and the text truly did disappear. It is not in the formula bar at all. I already thought of that, but thanks for your input.
Any other ideas?

 

[CyberTaz]

I'm afraid that with out a more explicit description there isn't much to go
on. Please provide as much detail as you can about the nature of the
content, how you're "populating text" [typing, pasting???].

Can you be more precise about what "a certain number of characters" is?

What do you mean by "tried reformatting" [reformatting _what_ in what way as
opposed to what original type of "formatting"?].

What file format are you saving in - description as well as exact extension?

Make sure you have Office fully updated (12.1.5 is the current build) & that
you've repaired disk permissions after any updates.

It's also possible that Excel isn't where the problem lies. The program
calls the save operation but the OS is responsible for writing the file to
disk... Excel simply says "OK Leopard, tuck this stuff away please". If OS X
isn't writing the changes there may be a need to look in that direction.
What type of device are you saving to - primary HD, external drive, network
device??? Are you having any similar issues with other programs?

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Sorry, I did not make it clear that I had already looked at the formula bar
and the text truly did disappear. It is not in the formula bar at all. I
already thought of that, but thanks for your input.
Any other ideas?

The text truly disappeared? When?

Was the text in the formula bar at any point?

XL takes the text that the system Clipboard has stored on it - so if the
text is never pasted in, the problem could be with the application that
you're copying from.

If the text is in the formula bar, though, and you save the file. I
can't think of anything (except a macro) that would truncate the cell
entry.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Hi John -

What if the cell is formatted as Hidden & Protection is turned on? Obviously
the content would still be there, but might that explain " keeps lopping off
the text in every cell--each at about the same number of characters " based
on what can be viewed in the cell v. "nothing" appearing in the Formula Bar?

Ah - if that's what "it's not in the formula bar at all" means (i.e., NO
text in the formula bar vs. none of the text that isn't displayed), it
makes sense.

It would never have occurred to me to format a cell to be both Unlocked
AND Hidden...