Making Blank Cells Really Blank (Zen Koan)
 

Hi,

I am using excel where i have mostly long strings of text in each cell and
if the cell to the right of the cell i am writing in has nothing in it then
the text just writes over that cell, if i hit spacebar in the cell to the
right then the text is truncated within its cell limits, nothing new so far,
right?

what i want, however, is the opposite of this, i would prefer if excel WOULD
automatically truncate the text at the cell limit, is there some shortcut or
setting i can change to make it do this?

thanks in advance!

Hi Ralph,
I don't think there is any option for that.
You could turn on cell wrap (format, cells, alignment, wrap text)
which would wrap within the cell. If you don't want that you could
force the appearance with wrap turned on by making the row only
1 row high. Wouldn't change the value only the display, and wrapping
occurs at end of word spaces not at a specific number of characters. .
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"Ralph" wrote in message ...
Hi,

I am using excel where i have mostly long strings of text in each cell and
if the cell to the right of the cell i am writing in has nothing in it then
the text just writes over that cell, if i hit spacebar in the cell to the
right then the text is truncated within its cell limits, nothing new so far,
right?

what i want, however, is the opposite of this, i would prefer if excel WOULD
automatically truncate the text at the cell limit, is there some shortcut or
setting i can change to make it do this?

thanks in advance!

did the trick, gracias

"David McRitchie" wrote:

Hi Ralph,
I don't think there is any option for that.
You could turn on cell wrap (format, cells, alignment, wrap text)
which would wrap within the cell. If you don't want that you could
force the appearance with wrap turned on by making the row only
1 row high. Wouldn't change the value only the display, and wrapping
occurs at end of word spaces not at a specific number of characters. .
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"Ralph" wrote in message ...
Hi,

I am using excel where i have mostly long strings of text in each cell and
if the cell to the right of the cell i am writing in has nothing in it then
the text just writes over that cell, if i hit spacebar in the cell to the
right then the text is truncated within its cell limits, nothing new so far,
right?

what i want, however, is the opposite of this, i would prefer if excel WOULD
automatically truncate the text at the cell limit, is there some shortcut or
setting i can change to make it do this?

thanks in advance!