On Tue, 3 Nov 2009 01:52:29 -0800 (PST), skaizun wrote:

I have two words, say, "ALPHA BETA", that are in a merged column(s)
and are text fields and are oriented downward, such that they read as
follows:

A
L
P
H
A
B
E
T
A

The problem is that there is no obvious space between "ALPHA" and
"BETA"; in other words, for some reason, Excel 2003 ignores all spaces/
blanks.

I tried many things, including inserting more than one space between
the words, carriage returns, and even using the HTML " " entity,
but nothing works.

Any help would be appreciated.

How did you enter the data?

Here's what I did:
Merge A1:A13
Enter: ALPHA BETA
Format/Cells/Alignment
Orientation: Select the box that shows Vertical Alignment.

The result showed the space between the two words.
--ron