What is displayed when the column is not wide enough to accommodate the data?

Welcome to WPS Official Academy to check the contents of How to remove hashtags in WPS Office Excel.

WPS Spreadsheet could be an alternative to Microsoft Office Excel. Includes hundreds of built-in formulas, pivot tables and more. Studying this tutorial can make your work easier with WPS Spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel. It supports xls, xlsx, and csv file formats.

What is Hashtags in WPS Spreadsheet?

Hashtags (#####)sometimes annoyingly occur in WPS Office Spreadsheet  when there isn't enough space for the content. To get rid of hashtags, we should judge on a case-by-case basis.

· Narrow column width to remove hashtags

This is the most common case. If the width is not wide enough to accommodate the content, ##### will be found in the table.

For example, if a long date format cannot fit in the cells, the ##### will appear to suggest you that the width of the cell need to increase. How can we fix it?

You can either widen the column or shrink the font.

1.  The easier way is to make the column wider by double-clicking the right edge of the column A.

By doing so, hashtags are removed because column A is automatically adjusted to fit the contents.

To make the font smaller is also easy to achieve. 

Select the column that has hashtags. Head to the Home tab, then hover over Font Size to preview the effect of different font sizes and choose the right one.

By doing so, you can find the hashtags disappear because smaller font size can be displayed in the column.

· Change negative number in dates to delete hashtags

All you need to do is to make sure you put the correct date and time format in cells. And you subtract the older date from the newer one.

In today' tutorials, we have learned why hashtag errors (#####) happen and what we can do to avoid or fix them.

To explore more about removing hashtags:

Adjusting the column width is a commonly used method to remove hashtags. To learn more about adjusting the column width, you can click here.

In today's free WPS Office tutorial, we have learned how to delete hashtags in Excel. Above are the easy and professional steps to get rid of hashtags in WPS Spreadsheet, similar to Microsoft Office and are avaliable for Windows, PC, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS devices.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the Excel AutoFit feature to make cells, columns or rows expand to fit text automatically.

Microsoft Excel provides a handful of different ways to change column width and adjust row height. The easiest way to resize cells is to have Excel automatically determine how much to widen or narrow the column and to expand or collapse the row to match the data size. This feature is known as Excel AutoFit and further on in this tutorial you will learn 3 different ways to use it.

Excel AutoFit - the basics

Excel's AutoFit feature is designed to automatically resize cells in a worksheet to accommodate different sized data without having to manually change the column width and row height.

AutoFit Column Width - changes the column width to hold the largest value in the column.

AutoFit Row Height - adjusts the column width to match the largest value in the row. This option expands the row vertically to hold multi-line or extra-tall text.

Unlike column width, Microsoft Excel changes the row height automatically based on the height of the text you type in a cell, therefore you won't really need to auto fit rows as often as columns. However, when exporting or copying data from another source, row heights may not auto adjust, and in these situations the AutoFit Row Height opting comes in helpful.

When resizing cells in Excel, either automatically or manually, please bear in mind the following limits to how big columns and rows can be made.

Columns can have a maximum width of 255, which is the maximum number of characters in the standard font size that a column can hold. Using a bigger font size or applying additional font characteristics such as italics or bold may significantly reduce the maximum column width. The default size of columns in Excel is 8.43.

Rows can have a maximum height of 409 points, with 1 point equal to approximately 1/72 inch or 0.035 cm. The default height of an Excel row varies from 15 points on a 100% dpi to 14.3 points on a 200% dpi.

When a column width or row height is set to 0, such column/row is not visible on a sheet (hidden).

How to AutoFit in Excel

What I particularly like about Excel is that it provides more than one way to do most things. Depending on your preferred work style, you can auto fit columns and rows by using the mouse, ribbon or keyboard.

AutoFit columns and rows with a double-click

The easiest way to auto fit in Excel is by double-clicking the column or row border:

  • To autofit one column, position the mouse pointer over the right border of the column heading until the double-headed arrow appears, and then double click the border.
  • To autofit one row, hover the mouse pointer over the lower boundary of the row heading, and double click the border.
  • To autofit multiple columns / multiple rows, select them, and double click a boundary between any two column / row headings in the selection.
  • To autofit the whole sheet, press Ctrl + A or click the Select All button
    What is displayed when the column is not wide enough to accommodate the data?
    and then, depending on your needs, double click a border of any column or row heading, or both.

What is displayed when the column is not wide enough to accommodate the data?

AutoFit columns and rows by using the ribbon

Another way to make Excel cells expand to fit text automatically is by using the following options on the ribbon:

To AutoFit column width, select one, several or all columns on the sheet, go to the Home tab > Cells group, and click Format > AutoFit Column Width.

To AutoFit row height, select the row(s) of interest, go to the Home tab > Cells group, and click Format > AutoFit Row Height.

What is displayed when the column is not wide enough to accommodate the data?

AutoFit column width and row height using a keyboard shortcut

Those of you who prefer working with the keyboard most of the time, may like the following way to auto fit in Excel:

  1. Select any cell in the column/row you want to autofit:
    • To autofit multiple non-adjacent columns/rows, select one column or row and hold down the Ctrl key while selecting the other columns or rows.
    • To autofit the entire sheet, press Ctrl + A or click the Select All button.
  2. Press one of the following keyboard shortcuts:
    • To AutoFit column width: Alt + H, then O, and then I
    • To AutoFit row height: Alt + H, then O, and then A

Please pay attention that you should not hit all the keys together, rather each key/key combination is pressed and released in turn:

  • Alt + H selects the Home tab on the ribbon.
  • O opens the Format menu.
  • I selects the AutoFit Column Width option.
  • A selects the AutoFit Row Height option.

If you are not sure you can remember the whole sequence, don't worry, as soon as you press the first key combination (Alt + H) Excel will display the keys to access all options on the ribbon, and once you open the Format menu, you will see the keys to select its items:

What is displayed when the column is not wide enough to accommodate the data?

Excel AutoFit not working

In most situations, the Excel AutoFit feature works without a hitch. There are times, however, when it fails to auto size columns or rows, especially when the Wrap Text feature is enabled.

Here's a typical scenario: you set the desired column width, turn Text Wrap on, select the cells of interest, and double click a row separator to autofit the row height. In most cases, rows are sized properly. But sometimes (and this may happen in any version of Excel 2007 to Excel 2016), some extra space appears below the last line of text as show in the screenshot below. Moreover, the text may look correctly on the screen, but gets cut off when printed.

What is displayed when the column is not wide enough to accommodate the data?

By trial and error, the following solution for the above problem has been found. At first sight, it may seem illogical, but it does work :)

  • Press Ctrl + A to select the whole worksheet.
  • Make any column a fair amount wider by dragging the right boundary of the column heading (because the entire sheet is selected, all the columns will be resized).
  • Double-click any row separator to auto fit the row height.
  • Double-click any column separator to auto fit the column widths.

Done!

Alternatives to AutoFit in Excel

The Excel AutoFit feature is a real time saver when it comes to adjusting the size of your columns and rows to match the size of your content. However, it's not an option when working with large text strings that are tens or hundreds of characters long. In this case, a better solution would be wrapping text so that it displays on multiple lines rather than on one long line.

Another possible way to accommodate long text is to merge several cells into one big cell. To do this, select two or more adjacent cells and click Merge & Center on the Home tab, in the Alignment group.

This is how you use the AutoFit feature in Excel to increase cell size and make your data easier to read. I thank you for reading and hope to see you on our blog next week!

You may also be interested in

What displays when columns are not wide enough to display values?

If your spreadsheet displays asterisks or pound signs in a cell instead of data, this is usually because the column is not wide enough to display the value you've entered.

What will Excel display if the cell is not wide enough?

Microsoft Excel might show ##### in cells when a column isn't wide enough to show all of the cell contents. Formulas that return dates and times as negative values can also show as #####.

What displays when a column is too narrow?

You can manually adjust the column width or row height or automatically resize columns and rows to fit the data. Note: The boundary is the line between cells, columns, and rows. If a column is too narrow to display the data, you will see ### in the cell.

What happens when the width of the column to display the output is less?

Answer: it will #DIV/0!