Because the setting on the [Alignment] tab in the Text Box's properties
dialog is set to vertical?
That's my first guess. And if that was done once and other text boxes
created using copies of it, then all the clones get the same text orientation.

"wyattf" wrote:

I am doing flowcharts using Excel. When I put text in text boxes or other
flowchart shapes the text becomes vertical rather than horizontal as soon as
I leave the text box. I suspect it is some erroneous startup setting because
I have not had this problem in the past.