Pasting multiline text in Mac Excel 2004

[Dizzley]

I'm used to Excel under Windows, so this came as a bit of an annoyance:

On the Mac I had selected some multiline text from a Mac Mail message. I formatted my destination as Text, Wrap Text. Then I selected the cell and tried to paste (Opt-V). I could see the text in the edit box top right, but, could only see a line of #######'s when I conformed the paste with Enter. This was true even if I greatly increased the cell height.

Next I tried editing the string in the edit box, ensuring no "newlines". No luck. Finally I split the text into lines using Ctrl+Opt+Enter - just like Ctrl-Enter in Windows Excel. Still no luck.

If I type it in manually - everything is hunky dory.

What's wrong? I'd love to know for future reference!

 

[RoryA]

Did you try formatting the cell as General, not Text?

 

[Dizzley]

Did you try formatting the cell as General, not Text?

I have now.

I had about 10 lines of text in the clipboard. I have managed to make it work in the following circumstances:

• General Format
• Reduce no. of lines to about 5
• Paste into the edit box NOT direct into the cell.
• No need to edit the newlines - leave as just pasted.

Pasting direct into the cell will paste each line of text into a new cell below.

That seems good enough for me thanks! Resolved.

 

[RoryA]

If you format the cell as Text, and your text is between 256 and 1024 characters, you get #####. If you format as General, you should get up to about 1024 displayed, though you can get more if you break the text up with line feed characters.