I am new to excel. I made some changes to a previously working spreadsheet
and suddenly many cells in one colums show ####. When I open it, the
appropriate value is there, but it is hidden beneath the ####. Any idea on
what I did???

Thanks in advance
Lisa

Try widening the column. If you want Excel to determine the width of the
column automatically, doubleclick on the right border of the column header.
If the column width is too wide, try formatting the number to limit the
number of decimal places. Then doubleclick the border again to reset the
width. Hope this helps...and welcome to Excel.

"grantljg" wrote:

I am new to excel. I made some changes to a previously working spreadsheet
and suddenly many cells in one colums show ####. When I open it, the
appropriate value is there, but it is hidden beneath the ####. Any idea on
what I did???

Thanks in advance
Lisa

The column width is not wide enough to display the value in the cell. With
the cell pointer in the column you need to adjust, click FORMAT in the menu,
select COLUMN and then WIDTH. Increase the column width to the desired size.
If you do not know what width to use, just repeat the process until the
column is wide enough to display your numbers correctly.
--
Kevin Backmann


"grantljg" wrote:

I am new to excel. I made some changes to a previously working spreadsheet
and suddenly many cells in one colums show ####. When I open it, the
appropriate value is there, but it is hidden beneath the ####. Any idea on
what I did???

Thanks in advance
Lisa

It could mean a few things.

1. The columnwidth is too narrow to show the number.

Widen the column or change the font size of that cell. Or change the
numberformat to General.

2. You have a date/time in that cell and it's negative

Don't use negative dates. If excel was helping you, it may have
changed the format to a date. Change it back to General (or some
other number format).

If you need to see negative date/times:
Tools|options|Calculation Tab|and check 1904 date system
(but this can cause trouble--watch what happens to your dates
and watch what happens when you copy|paste dates to a different
workbook that doesn't use this setting)

3. You have a lot of text in the cell, the cell is formatted as Text.

Format the cell as general.

4. You really have ###'s in that cell.

Clean up that cell.

5. You have # in a cell, but it's format is set to Fill.

Change the format
(format|cells|alignment tab|horizontal box, change it to General.

grantljg wrote:

I am new to excel. I made some changes to a previously working spreadsheet
and suddenly many cells in one colums show ####. When I open it, the
appropriate value is there, but it is hidden beneath the ####. Any idea on
what I did???

Thanks in advance
Lisa

--

Dave Peterson