Microsoft Excel: Fit A Slightly Too Large Value In A Cell

Problem: You have a column with a width setting of 8.5. The longest value in that column is 10 characters wide. This is just a bit too large. Text entries might be truncated and some numeric entries will appear as pound signs, as shown in Fig. 1294.

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Strategy: Excel offers a Shrink to Fit option. Select the cells that are too large. From the menu, select Format – Cells. On the Alignment tab, choose Shrink to Fit from the Text Control section, as shown in Fig. 1295.

Result: The cells are displayed in a smaller font when they become too wide for the column, as shown in Fig. 1296. This is preferable to having the numbers displayed as ######.

Summary: When you have just a few cells that are too large for the column, use the Shrink to Fit option to allow the values to display properly without showing the overflow pound signs.

Commands Discussed: Format – Cells – Shrink to Fit

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