Excel 2021 cell limit

comcom said:

Is Excel 2021 cell character limit more than Excel 2019 cell character limit? (I googled and do not see info about Excel 2021 cell character limit.)

Limits in Excel seem to be the same for all versions from Office 2007 onwards.

Microsoft said:

Total number of characters that a cell can contain

32,767 characters

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...Newer_versions

As for the text part, I had occasion to put text in a spreadsheet a couple weeks ago, couldn't get it organized right so I put a Text box in a cell to get what I needed.

comcom said:

Q2. I tend to type a lot of text in a single cell in Excel 2019 and it has a limited character in each cell and I need to continue typing in the next cell, I do not see any solution to this, any ideas?

You can make the cells as big a needed - Change the column width or row height in Excel. I do it all the time

You can also drag to make the cells longer or taller by putting the mouse curser on the line between the cells until the mouse curser turns into a cross and simply drag to the size you want.

Hope this helps

comcom said:

Q2. I tend to type a lot of text in a single cell in Excel 2019 and it has a limited character in each cell and I need to continue typing in the next cell, I do not see any solution to this, any ideas?

The feature you need is Wrap Text in the Alignment section toward the centre of the the Home tab between the Font and Number sections. Row height is auto-adjusted as you type and each new line is added. The only other thing you need to do is adjust the column width as required.

Christophe

CMArbres said:

The only other thing you need to do is adjust the column width as required.

That's the key point

I don't see any point in extending text in one cell so far to the right that it involves readers having to scroll. That's annoying. It is for this reason that Excel's word wrap only allows vertical expansion of cells. There is no option for both vertical and horizontal word wrap. Usually, the only sensible justification for allowing text to span right over several cells is for headings, and that preserves column widths, but does not involve word wrap.

So, word wrap is the way to go in most instances where large amounts of text is required. And it's easy to set a column width that makes sense for users.

If you expand cells vertically text will not wrap automatically to new lines, it just flows to the right endlessly. Further, unless you alter the default text location in the cell from the bottom to the top, typing in a vertically expanded cell just leaves a big blank space above it. You have to pre-select Top align text first to fix that.

Just clicking in a blank cell is what enables Word Wrap to be selected. But set the column width and top alignment first, then click in the target cell, select word wrap, type. The cell auto-expands downward, never to the right.

It doesn't work any other way.

Thanks for all comments.

Example: I copied and pasted all the text from 1996 California Proposition 218 - Wikipedia into excel B2 cell but not all text are pasted in because each cell has character limit. Excel auto cuts off the rest of the text when it reaches limit.

In the future I will select the B2 cell and read the text in B2 cell displayed at the top box. I usually only read long text at top box as I find it easier to read long text there.

This is how it looks like when I click once B2 cell to select B2 cell using my mouse and the B2 cell contents is displayed at top box https://i.imgur.com/MEdcLdI.png

I will click once inside the top box and press page down until the end to see the last character it allows. Not all the information is pasted in due to character limit. This is how it looks like https://i.imgur.com/HQDE6uy.png

(For your info, at the top box, dragging the right down bar or clicking the right arrow down will not reach the most bottom. To reach most bottom you need to click once inside the top box then press page down, or use mouse to select the text and drag down to most bottom.)

Changing column width, wrap text does not increase the character limit in a cell. I use Excel 2019

CMArbres said:

I don't see any point in extending text in one cell so far to the right that it involves readers having to scroll....

LOL - neither do I. And if you were familiar with the feature, you'd know you determine the length

And there's also the option of merging cells

sygnus21 said:

LOL - neither do I. And if you were familiar with the feature, you'd know you determine the length

And there's also the option of merging cells

Here we go! ding dong! Actually, this is an interesting discussion.

The alternative method to the first one I mentioned that does involve merging cells and does not involve adjusting the size of the column holding the cell you typed text into beforehand has its own serious limitations, and can lead to more trouble than it's worth if more text is added to the cell range than it has the capacity to hold.

Whilst you are able to select a range of adjacent cells both to the right and below the extended right cell containing the text and hit Merge cells to create the expanded range with the text nicely formatted inside that newly defined range, it only works if that pre-selected cell range has enough text capacity. Otherwise, the overflow is invisible.

If you then try to correct this problem by selecting other adjacent cells to include in the original merge cells group selected to correct this problem, you cannot only select just enough extra cells to just hold the overflow text. Instead, it forces you to accept the only available option of simply duplicating the cell group to the same dimensions as the original merged cell group you created, and then simply copies the original text inside the duplicate, with no extra white space, so is useless. It also doubles the entire original merged group dimensions undesirably.

You can then merge the two groups but, if you do, you create a new cell group range that is 4 x the dimensions of the original in which ever direction you selected, either right or beneath. Also utterly useless.

The other way of dealing with the overflow using this Merge cells method is to change the column and/or width dimensions controlling the new cell group's dimensions to accomodate the overflow. However, you then obviate the advantage gained by using this method to avoid adjacent column and/or line dimensions being increased.

So this alternative method merge cells method has both pros and cons. The very nice pro is that no adjacent column or line sizes are altered and remain at default cell dimensions. Very nice indeed. But the con is that you have to know the exact dimensions of the cell range box beforehand. It is not adjustable afterwards in any desirable fashion. And you still end up having to alter adjacent column and line dimensions, thus obviating choosing this method in the first place.

The first method I mentioned a few posts back just using Wrap text also has pros and cons. The pro is you end up with an auto-sized text area determined in width by the expanded column dimensions you first set. The con is that the entire column and width of the expanded text cell is widened causing its own difficulties with layout for the rest of the sheet.

Personally, I prefer the Merge method, but you have to know how many cells to select for the merge group to accomodate all of the text with no overflow or too much white space beforehand. Otherwise, the advantage gained using this method by virtue of not affecting the dimensions of any whole lines or columns is significant, without needing to use a text box that has its own pros and cons of a different nature.

Best wishes,

Christophe

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comcom said:

Thanks for all comments.

You are most welcome.

Changing column width, wrap text does not increase the character limit in a cell. I use Excel 2019

I am using Office-365 and don't have stand-alone 2019 version installed (very nice btw), so cannot replicate the methods I have listed for that reason. However, I seem to remember, from when I did use 2019 and even earlier versions, that there is no difference with respect to merge and wrap functions for any 2000 + version. Could be wrong but...

Christophe