Excel cell contents not visible - but show in formula bar and print preview

I recently had a problem with Excel 2007 where the cell contents did not show.  I could see the contents in Print Preview and in the formula bar.

Research via goggle showed me that it was likely to be caused by Wrapped Text on Merged Cells.  I didn't have Merged cells, but I did have wrapped text.  I was able to see the contents again if I

  • used the ToolBar and did Clear - All formats. 

This is nice, but I need it formatted.  It is a standard worksheet used by the entire organization.

More oddities

  • Other users could open and view the contents on their laptops
  • I could see the contents when I didn't have my laptop docked
  • It worked for months and then just quit working one day.

The fix (thanks Jennifer!)

  • Changing the font size, changing the monitor resolution did NOT fix the problem
  • Remove the laptop from the dock, boot the machine and delete the dock profile, redock the machine and let a new profile be created.  Problem cleared.

Not sure what was in the profile causing the problem, but I hope it doesn't come back.

 

posted @ Monday, October 27, 2008 10:19 AM

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# re: Excel cell contents not visible - but show in formula bar and print preview

Left by Eric Ellcessor at 11/11/2009 5:25 AM
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We just experienced this with Excel 2008 on Leopard - both fully patched. Quite scary when it first happens, though. <POOF> Half of the contents of a spreadsheet appear gone.

It's repeatable now for us and appears to be a memory limit of some kind. The spreadsheet in question has quite a bit of color formatting but not much in the way of formulas and no macros. The data will 'reappear' when 'select all' and then 'copy to clipboard' are performed.

Interestingly enough there is very little in common between the computing environments other than Excel, and even that's pretty slim since it's demonstrated in both PC and Mac versions.

Our fix was to 'Clear All' formatting and then re-apply as needed BUT only in the cell ranges it was required and no longer let the formatting extend beyond the boundary of the sheet's data.

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