I'm working with a spreadsheet that has automatic calculation disabled
because a large number of UDF database lookups refer to one cell and
recalculating the sheet takes a long time if the wrong selection is made in
that cell.

The wrong selection is easy to make because the contents are a
non-descriptive number that could refer to a list of other items.

To work around this, I created a dynamic name that looks up the list of
items the non-descript number refers to and linked a text box to that name
(the text box will update without recalculating).

Last night, I could have sworn the text box was displaying the full cell
conents even for those cells containing over 255 characters. Today it stops
at 255. Other than saving the spreadsheet, I can't figure out what has
changed.

Was I hallucinating? If not, how do I get the full text back?