If you teach spreadsheet classes, here’s a tip you can teach your students that will save them lots of headaches down the road. We based this tip on a question from the TechRepublic Forums that was posted with a value of 100 TechPoints.
When you post a question in a TechRepublic forum, you assign a certain number of your TechPoints to that question, and you get to award those points to whoever answers the question to your satisfaction. If you don’t know how many TechPoints you have, click the My TechPoints link in our left navigation bar.
Just widen the column, baby
Here’s the question that was posted by TechRepublic member Jackie W.: “Every time I open an Excel file, it shows the pound sign (“#”) in some of the cells. Can someone help me?”

At the time of this writing, Jackie hadn’t yet awarded her TechPoints, but several TechRepublic members had posted possible solutions. Follow this link to read the entire forum thread.

The explanation, of course, is that there’s something in the cell that contains too many characters to be displayed with the current column width setting. There are many ways to fix that problem—the easiest is to simply widen the column that contains the string of pound signs.
If you haven’t yet posted or answered a question in our forums, follow this link to check out what your fellow TechRepublic members are asking. To comment on this forum thread, please post a comment below or send us a note.
If you teach spreadsheet classes, here’s a tip you can teach your students that will save them lots of headaches down the road. We based this tip on a question from the TechRepublic Forums that was posted with a value of 100 TechPoints.
When you post a question in a TechRepublic forum, you assign a certain number of your TechPoints to that question, and you get to award those points to whoever answers the question to your satisfaction. If you don’t know how many TechPoints you have, click the My TechPoints link in our left navigation bar.
Just widen the column, baby
Here’s the question that was posted by TechRepublic member Jackie W.: “Every time I open an Excel file, it shows the pound sign (“#”) in some of the cells. Can someone help me?”

At the time of this writing, Jackie hadn’t yet awarded her TechPoints, but several TechRepublic members had posted possible solutions. Follow this link to read the entire forum thread.

The explanation, of course, is that there’s something in the cell that contains too many characters to be displayed with the current column width setting. There are many ways to fix that problem—the easiest is to simply widen the column that contains the string of pound signs.
If you haven’t yet posted or answered a question in our forums, follow this link to check out what your fellow TechRepublic members are asking. To comment on this forum thread, please post a comment below or send us a note.