I can double click and get the words but when I move off the cell, it returns
to pound marks,

Stupid question, but did you increase the width of your column?

"claudia riley" wrote:

I can double click and get the words but when I move off the cell, it returns
to pound marks,

What you are actually seeing when you dbl+click is formulas that produce
numerical results, but the cells have been formatted in some way (Currency,
perhaps). The program is telling you that the columns are not wide enough to
display the entire formatted content so it won't display anything but the
#####. This is done to prevent misleading partial info, such as only $1,000
showing when the actual amount is $1,000,000,000.

There are other reasons why these symbols appear, but this is the most
likely. To fix the problem you can either widen the columns or perhaps use a
smaller font size, remove bold, etc.

BTW- This is far less likely to happen if you avoid changing column widths
manually in the first place. More recent versions of XL will _automatically_
adjust the column widths when number formatting is applied if the width has
not previously been set to something other than the default. If you change
the width yourself, you are basically telling XL "This is what I want, leave
it alone!".

HTH |:)

HTH |:)

"mkobulni" wrote:

Stupid question, but did you increase the width of your column?

"claudia riley" wrote:

I can double click and get the words but when I move off the cell, it returns
to pound marks,

If you see words, then I'm guessing that your cell is formatted as Text.

Try changing that cell's format to General (format|Cells|number tab).

claudia riley wrote:

I can double click and get the words but when I move off the cell, it returns
to pound marks,

--

Dave Peterson