Text in Text-formatted cells changes to ### after the 255th character

Many times in the past when I would type plain text into cells of an Excel spreadhseet, I noticed that at point, the contents of a cell would turn into sharp signs (i.e. ####################). I did not know what triggered this, but I did notice that if I change the cell type from Text to General, the cell's text would come back to normal. Today I had this happened again, and I was determined to find out what caused it. As it turns out, if you have a Text-formatted type cell and you type more than 255 characters in it, all the cell's contents will turn into sharp signs. In order to revert to the text you must either change the cell's format to General or truncate the text manually to a maximum of 255 characters. The problem with formatting cells as General in a text-only spreadsheet is that you cannot use characters that make Excel think you are typing a formula; that is, you cannot use hyphens or "keywords" such as "not", etc, without prefixing them with a '. This is why I normally format all cells as Text when I know I will only type text in a certain spreadsheet. Has anyone else noticed this, and is there a solution to have more than 255 characters in a cell without having to change its type to General? Thanks for any help.