All text appear as pound sign on Microsoft Excel

[vALaNCiA]

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I merged several cells in order to type a paragraph of text, (350 characters). When I concluded, the text appears as "#############...####". I haven't done anything that I don't regularly do except I started with some one elses file.This is the text I typed: "This is the packing Gland. The listed P/N's are pre-existing from theBleed-Air Project. The materials are for High Temp. Application and they may need to be changed for this project. If the relative cost is and the availability of materials are insignificant. and the corrosion-resistance is acceptable we should use the parts already in our system." The cell is formatted as text. I have turned on Wrap Text. Hopefully, someone can give me a clue.

[Hollyn]

It could mean a few things :

• The column width is too narrow to show the number : Widen the column or change the font size of that cell. Or change the number format to General.
• 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)
• You have a lot of text in the cell, the cell is formatted as Text : Format the cell as general.
• You really have ###'s in that cell : Clean up that cell.
• You have # in a cell, but it's format is set to Fill : Change the format. Click on format > cells > alignment tab > horizontal box > change it to General.

[QUENBY]

If after typing a formula in a cell in Excel, and it returns you a series of sharp #####, things are not so bad as they seem. This simply means that the result of your formula is too big for the column. So to fix this I think you just need to to widen the columns. To do this, click between two columns (the cursor becomes a double arrow) and drag the mouse to resize the column and finally see the results of your formulas.