I want to only enter a certain number of charecters in a cell then move to a
new cell.

Michael

Excel has no idea what you typed into a cell until you hit the ENTER, Tab or an
arrow key to move out of the cell.

You can't use VBA code while in Edit mode so that is out also.

Using Data Validation you can restrict the amount of text entered, but that also
requires you to move out of the cell before you get the "restricted" message and
the extra text won't get transferred to a new cell.

Your best bet is to count as you type then ENTER to go to a new cell or split
the text after the fact with DataText to ColumnsFixed Width.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:44:03 -0700, Michael
wrote:

I want to only enter a certain number of charecters in a cell then move to a
new cell.

If you're typing a large amount of text that you would prefer to have shown
in separate rows instead of one long row, instead of having to figure out
when to hit enter to keep it even, use the justify command afterwards. Type
all of the text in first cell, select the range you wish to limit your text
width and several rows down. Prior to 2007, go to Edit, Fill, Justify and it
will be separated into individual entries on consecutive rows. In 2007,
click the fill button in the Editing section of the Home tab and choose
Justify.

If you did not select enough rows to handle the data, the range will be
extented down, if there is data in those cells, it will be overwritten.

If instead, you were wanting to type only 5 characters in column A and then
have it automatically move to column B, you could instead type all of the
data in A and then use text to columns to separate the data into individual
cells. The Text to Columns command is on the Data menu prior to '07 and on
the Data tab, Data tools section in '07.

"Michael" wrote:

I want to only enter a certain number of charecters in a cell then move to a
new cell.

You may be able to create a userform with a textbox that counts characters as
you type. When a certain limit is reached, it would copy the value of the
textbox to the activecell and advance to the next cell (whatever next means).



Michael wrote:

I want to only enter a certain number of charecters in a cell then move to a
new cell.

--

Dave Peterson