Sometimes I can type in a cell and the text spans several cells, sometimes not (all cells nearby have no Text Control)

[henway]

This should be super-simple.
I get lots of horribly formatted Excel sheets from my company where they will make all the columns 15 pixels wide.
Sometimes when I fill in a cell with a number or text longer than the cell, it will show up properly in the cell and "overhang" into the cell to the right and be visible.
Sometimes it will only display a "#" because it's too long for the cell.

The cell (and all cells next to it) have NO wrap text and NO Shrink to fit checked.

I can't find rhyme or reason to what causes this. I don't want to use Merge Cells to make the cell larger.

How do I get data to show up at the right font size and "show" over the cells to the right (these cells have nothing in them)?

 

[MARK858]

Are the cells with # dates?

 

[henway]

Some are numbers, some are text. The original is in Japanese and they typically try to put in "1 per unit" in the cell and then they have other cells that have the equivalent of multiplying (without using it). So they're using Excel as glorified Word. So I am formatting that cell to be #"per unit" and using it to calculate. Even if I reformat the cell to be just a "number" and the number is more than 3 digits, it will appear as #.

 

[henway]

The ONLY thing that's able to "spill" into the next cell is when the cell isn't a number. If it's text, then I can format it as a number or anything else and it will still show correctly. However, as soon as I put in a number, it doesn't matter how I format the cell (percent, currency, any custom) as it will only show up as "#" because the column is too thin to show more than one digit.

How to get ANY number to "spill" into the cells to the right when its length is greater than the column width? This seems like an Excel 101 question, but I've had the problem before and never asked HOW to fix it.

 

[henway]

Title not indicative enough of problem--will explain better on new thread.