Large volume text

[PirateJenny]

I am a research assistant extracting data from Word documents and copying it to an Excel sheet. Some of the data is lengthy and (for the purposes of the research) cannot be broken into multiple cells.

At a certain row height (242.25) or character volume the text will no longer wrap. I have tried manually expanding the row height and column width, I have tried re-typing the text that did not wrap and I checked the spacing for "hidden" issues but nothing has worked.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and I thank you in advance for your time!

 

[mole999]

there are physical limits to 2003, think its a 1024 characters

2007 allows more, and is related to memory

you could be better off storing your data in a memo field in access

 

[Smitty]

Welcome to the Board!

Before you get to far in your attempts you should know that Excel is a lousy text editor.

What are you trying to accomplish? If we know that then maybe someone can come up with a different approach.

If you'd like to post some screen shots, PM me your e-mail address and I'll send you the Board's HTML Maker.

 

[VoG]

Is this data in Tables in Word?

 

[PirateJenny]

Hello, all.

I am using 2007, sorry I forgot to mention it. I totally agree with the assessment that Excel is crap for editing.

More information:
I am extracting data from a series of interviews (all in Word, straight text, no tables, question and answer, there are some preset tabs) and then categorizing the data into sets. It is for an sociological ethnographic research project, part of a dissertation.

There are 4 columns:
1. the category of data
2. the text from the interview, which can be lengthy and include multiple questions and answers
3. notes and references
4. date of interview

The data can remain linear for the time being, I am at the extraction phase rather than the organization phase. I know it sounds clunky, but for these purposes the data needs to be pulled out and analyzed before it is put into a organized database. I really just need to be able to look at the text from the interview in its entirety.

Again, I really appreciate the feedback. I am pretty good at forcing Microsoft tools into doing what I need them to, but this has me stymied.

Many thanks.

 

[VoG]

If you can convert the Word data to Tables (shouldn't be difficult) then I have a macro that will pull them into Excel.

 

[mole999]

2007 reports

row height must be between 0 and 409, eith dragging or directly entering row height as a value

 

[PirateJenny]

The row height of the cells where the text will not wrap is well below the limit. I am starting to suspect that the problem is with the Word document. I am going to delete one of the problem cells and type the text by hand to see if that is the case.

Thanks again for everyone's help and suggestions, I am going to continue to work on a solution and will post on this thread if I find it (however inelegant it is likely to be).

I can't say enough about how much I appreciate this community's willingness to jump in and help.

 

[Cindy Ellis]

I've had that problem before, where the text stops wrapping at some point short of the cell height, but it disappeared when we moved to Excel 2007. I just tried copying a huge cell of text into Excel, and it is wrapping OK, even though the row height has the limit you mentioned. (I changed the font size to 6 to view as much as possible). I even changed it to compatibility mode and back-saved it as 1997-2003, and it worked OK.
Cindy

 

[PirateJenny]

Thanks. It is good to know that if I have to switch to a different version I will still be able to use the data I have collected to date.