I have a column that I want to be 23 pixels wide with "wrap text" off (even
though the cells will contain project status comments - a large amount of
text).

In previous versions of Excel this was not a problem. I could format the
cell appropriately, enter my text (including several alt-enter line breaks)
and the cell would retain the desired format.

In Excel 2003 SP2 the behavior changed. Now, when I enter text that contains
alt-enter line breaks, "wrap text" gets automatically turned on and the row
height gets automatically adjusted - leaving me with a very tall cell (more
than can be displayed on one screen) with 1 or 2 character displayed per
line. Every time I update the comments in the cell I have to reset "wrap
text" to off and resize the row height.

How can I disable this new behavior? It makes it nearly impossible for me to
continue using a spreadsheet I have used for a very long time.