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In a Google Doc spreadsheet I would like to have each row the same height no matter how much text is in each cell.

I have tried "resize row" but no matter how many pixels I put in, the row expands downward to the height of the highest cell with full expanded text.

How can I force the row to stay a certain height and insert scrollbars for all text that is longer than that height?

alt text

Here's a video explaining what I mean:

http://screenr.com/Ol4

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I can't find a way to do it. I'd be interested in seeing a solution to this as well. – Al Everett Sep 22 '10 at 12:55
There may be a way to show a limited amount of content and then expand it or open in a box onclick using a custom script. How tied are you to the particular interface scetched in your image? – Dan Roberts Oct 1 '10 at 1:19
The solution I need to to be able to paste "endless text/images" into the little cells so that I can zoom in and look at all that text if I want but can at any time, back up and get an overview of all my notes and code. Right now, I cannot get this overview since the long texts and code inserts expand everything so far down the page. – Edward Tanguay Oct 7 '10 at 7:21

7 Answers

There is no solution for this one. This is just how HTML works. They are using Table for the cells and by default it's not adding scroll bars if the text doesn't fit. Maybe they will change it in the future, but I don't think that this is in their priority list. And it looks like you can merge cells only horizontally, just in case you wanted to merge vertically to make it look nicer.

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1  
I wonder why they didn't implement overflow:scroll on cells to allow for this. – Al Everett Oct 6 '10 at 21:39
1  
Incorrect @Lipis. It's not a limitation of HTML. A simple <div style="overflow:hidden; height: 20px;">Stuff in here</div> would do the trick. – Levitikon Jun 9 '12 at 17:26
@Levitikon but can you imagine how ugly would that be with so many scrollbars? and if you don't have scrollbars you wouldn't see the whole text.. and you had to guess that there is something more there to see it after you click on it or something.. I don't think that that is a good solution.. – Lipis Jun 9 '12 at 19:41

Fourth option from the right (Menu bar - once you're in the spreadsheet with the results, etc.). There is an option "WRAP TEXT", select the rows you want and click it.

This sorted it out for me. Once wrap text was on and all rows went to a single line height, I could then also select all rows and resize them all when resizing one, just like in Excel.

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This was the answer for me, thanks! – Znarkus Mar 22 at 9:32

If they're not offering the feature your only option may be to create a Greasemonkey script, assuming you want it that bad.

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I agree, that so far this is impossible but have you tried using different hex characters like NBSP for your text? This would make things ugly and lose your formatting I noticed without carriage returns the length of the entry has no bearing on the height.

Edit: You should also submit your (very well presented idea) here

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There is no actual way, wrapping will effect cell width not it's height. Whenever it bothers me I add the text as a comment block. Simply right click on a relevant cell and select "comment" off the context menu; delete the auto generated text and paste yours. This way you'll be able to maintain a fixed row height for all your rows.

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Simple. Select all cells in the spreadsheet, then unselect the WRAP TEXT button. See button highlighted in the below screenshot. Every row and column will revert back to identical sizes.

enter image description here

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Fourth option from the right (Menu bar - once you're in the spreadsheet with the results, etc.). There is an option "WRAP TEXT", select the rows you want and click it.

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How does this answer the question? – Vidar S. Ramdal Nov 6 '12 at 14:32

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