Hi Darrell,

The reason why your text appears as pound signs is because the text is too long to fit in the cell. Excel displays pound signs when the cell is not wide enough to display the entire value. This is a common issue when you merge cells and enter a large amount of text.

To fix this issue, you can try one of the following solutions:

1. Increase the width of the cell: You can do this by dragging the right border of the cell to the right until the text is fully displayed.
   
2. Decrease the font size: You can try reducing the font size of the text to fit it within the cell.
   
3. Use word wrap: You mentioned that you have already turned on word wrap, but just to be sure, you can select the merged cell, go to the Home tab, and click on the Wrap Text button.
   
4. Use multiple cells: Instead of merging cells, you can try entering the text in multiple cells and aligning them to look like a single paragraph.

I hope this helps you resolve the issue.