Excel Question

[Grifman]

I have 4 letters in a cell, AAAA and I want to add 9 periods to the end of that text so I used:

=(cell with AAAA)&"........."

This gives me AAAA......... in my cell with the formula

However, if I use LEN(this cell) it says I have only 8 characters. But I should have 13, the AAAA plus my 9 periods. Why isn't it giving me a length of 13? If it backspace to take the periods out, it takes out 3 at a time rather than one at a time. It seems like Excel isn't counting each period as one character which is what I want. Anyway to fix this?

[stessier]

I think it is counting them as ellipses, which is kind of funny (because it is not happening to me).

Have you tried

=(cell with AAAA)&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."

Edit: Tried it in Excel 2013 and my solution works.

[Grifman]

I think it is counting them as ellipses, which is kind of funny (because it is not happening to me).

Have you tried

=(cell with AAAA)&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."&"."

Edit: Tried it in Excel 2013 and my solution works.

Thanks, that's good idea, I'll try that.

[Montag]

you can use the concatenate function as well

[jimbo]

You could also remove the entry in your autocorrect settings for changing ... into ... (three periods into ellipsis)... probably.

[stessier]

you can use the concatenate function as well

The & function is the same thing and uses less keystrokes than using concatenate (in this case anyway).

[Isgrimnur]

Something that I had to learn twice.

[Kraken]

Here's a weird one for you.

Wife's Win 10 laptop running Excel from Office 2007. When she double-clicks any Excel file, the program launches, but the file does not load. Choosing "Open" from the file button opens it without problems. AFAIK this behavior only affects Excel -- Word docs behave as expected when double-clicked.

[gilraen]

Uncheck Ignore DDE option if checked?

[Kraken]

Thanks, I'll have a look at that. I figured it's some obscure setting because everything is working fine otherwise.

[MonkeyFinger]

Be curious if that works for you. I've got something similar with a work Windows 10 laptop and Excel in Office 2013 - sometimes a pinned file will open as a blank workbook. Thankfully it's pretty rare but still a bit of a head scratcher when it happens.

[Kraken]

Be curious if that works for you. I've got something similar with a work Windows 10 laptop and Excel in Office 2013 - sometimes a pinned file will open as a blank workbook. Thankfully it's pretty rare but still a bit of a head scratcher when it happens.

It might be a few days before Wife's laptop is both home and not in use, and I remember to try it. But I will get to it eventually and will post my results.

[Kraken]

Uncheck Ignore DDE option if checked?

The box was indeed checked, and unchecking it did indeed fix the problem. Thanks!

[MonkeyFinger]

Good to know. Sadly, mine came unchecked so that's not my fix. At least it's pretty rare...