When does Excel decide to overflow text into adjacent cells, or cut them at the boundary?

Question

In Excel, 2010 or any other version probably, if I enter in a cell, a long single-line text that is longer than the width of the cell, Excel sometimes render the text across the next adjacent cells; some other times, it gets cut off at the boundary with the adjacent cell to the right.I would like to know how does Excel decides what to do, so I can better control my layouts.Note that I do not want to use merge cells, as it is inapproperiate at times. Also, I already tried "Clear All" formatting on all affected cells but still doesn't seem to reveal much.Any ideas? Thank you.

Answer 1

Its a simple matter of cell settings. You have the option to "wrap text" within a cell. However, with this option deselected, if there is an entry in the next cell, Excel will not overwrite that cell; the overflow text will be hidden. There is another setting for cell height: if it is a fixed height, text may wrap but still not be visible. This is sometimes desirable - to keep the row at a certain height - and one can always click inside the cell to see the entire contents in the entry bar at top or click and hit F2 (Edit) to see the text expand in place.