why do I get a series of pound signs in a cell?

[Mark S.]

The cell was filled with text that I want to keep. Then I copy / paste in
additional text, and all text turns to pound signs (#). Symbols go left to
right in a straight line and do not text wrap at all.
Why is this happening?

 

[Dave Peterson]

Try changing the format of the cell from text to General.

 

[ed]

Try changing the format of the cell from text to General.

When you copy / Paste the target cell takes on the format of the
copied cell, including erasing your conditiona lformat.. Sop changing
the format to General won't solve the problem. Instead use Paste-
special values.

ed

 

[ed]

Try changing the format of the cell from text to General.

As an afterthought: How can you copy / paste text to a cell with
text in it? You would erase the original text as well as the
formatting. If you copied it off the formula bar and pasted it
editorially in the target cell's formula bar it won't change the
formatting. Just what are you doing?

ed

 

[Jim Thomlinson]

The text is too wide to display. Expand the column size or allow the cell to
wrap text.

 

[Dave Peterson]

If the OP is pasting additional text, it doesn't sound like a Copy|paste problem
to me.

It sounds like the OP is already pasting that additional text into the existing
text in the cell--either in the formula bar or directly in the cell (if that
option is turned on).

 

[Gord Dibben]

Jim

Text being too long will not give you ## signs on a narrow column.

Numbers will give you ## signs if the column is not wide enough.

Dave is right.......Excel has a problem with text-formatted cells when the
character count is between 255 and 1024.

Changing to General format will get rid of the ## signs.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP