OK. I give. Why can't I use the "@" (at sign) in a text cell?

[Terry Lowe]

I looked all through doc and searched online and cannot find an answer to
this question. I need some experienced help.

I have a cell (a whole column) defined as Text. If the text I type in the
cell includes an at sign (@) the text field displays as ##### (railroad
tracks) most of the time. I have verified the format is text (and word wrap
is on) and it doesn't matter if I start the text with an apostrophe or not.
It also appears to be OK in some text cells but not others. What is the deal?

Thanks.

 

[Terry Lowe]

Oops. Apparently it has nothing to do with the "@" sign. Now I'm guessing
that Excel seems to have a limit on the number of characters you can have in
a cell (I'm guessing 255). However, I have searched the doc several times and
cannot find that documented anywhere. (I don't seem to recall this from any
of the miriad of Excel classes I have been to either.)

Any suggestions as to where that is documented and is there a way to expand
this value?

 

[Biff]

Format the cells as GENERAL.

From Excel Help: (search Help for limits and specifications)

Length of cell contents (text)... 32,767 characters. Only 1,024 display in a
cell; all 32,767 display in the formula bar.

Biff

 

[Dave Peterson]

Excel has a problem with cells formatted as text where the value is between 255
and 1024 characters long. Formatting as General will fix the display.

 

[Ragdyer]

The format to General *is* the solution, but ... I think it's because of the
"Text Bug".

There seems to be a quirk (bug), where in a Text formatted cell of more then
approximately 256 characters, you'll get the ###'s.

Stranger yet, if you keep typing, the true text *returns* when the character
count exceeds 1024.

General format works for the "in-between" character counts.