Can a single cell in Excel extend over several pages? How?

Question

I encountered this problem while trying to write really large chunks of text in Excel. In spite of of wrapping turned on, my text doesn't really get wrapped once it stretches over more than 12 lines (the cell B3 in the screenshot). I am actually able to continue writing but the cell size doesn't accomodate to the extent of the written text. The only way to read the whole content of the cell is in the box that appears to the top of the selected cell. That text, however, does not keep the formatting of the original text and is therefore difficult to read. Is it possible to make a table in Excel with really huge cells - extending maybe over 2/3 pages? Cell merging doesn't seem to help much. It would require dividing the text into several cells and that isn't very practical, I think. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Is it possible to make a table in Excel with huge cells - extending over 2/3 pages?

Probably not (unless you upgrade your version of Excel).

Excel 2003 can only display 1024 characters in each cell (even though a cell can contain up to 32,767 characters).

Later versions of Excel removed the limitation, and will display cells containing up to 32,767 characters.

In Excel there are two separate limitations at play: a limit on what can be entered in a cell and a limit on what can be displayed. In most cases, the limit on what can be entered in a cell is not a real issue; Excel allows you to enter up to 32,767 characters in each cell. All of these characters will show up in the Formula bar just fine.

The problem comes with the display limitation. There is a limit that Excel will display only the first 1,024 characters in each cell. In other words, if there is anything more than this in a cell (which could be likely in some circumstances), then it won't display; Excel pretends like it isn't even there. You can't get around this limit by changing fonts, cell sizes, wrapping status, or anything else.

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In later versions of Excel (after Excel 2003) Microsoft changed the display limits to match those of the cell entry limits. In other words, you can enter and display up to 32,767 characters in later versions of Excel.

Source Character Limits for Cells