Excel - Prevent cell text from overflowing into next (empty) cell

Yes, you can change this behavior, but you will probably not want the side effects this causes.

The key to limiting the cell contents to the cell's boundaries regardless of whether the adjacent cell contains data is the text alignment Fill. Select the cells you don't want to overflow and right click them > Format cells... > Alignment tab > Horizontal alignment > Fill

The problem with this method is that this will actually fill cells by repeating their content when it is short enough to fit in the cell multiple times. See below screenshot for what this means. (Note that B7 is filled with 'short text'.)

In addition to this, numbers will become left aligned and if the adjacent cell is set to Fill, too, text will still overflow into that cell (thanks posfan12 and HongboZhu for pointing this out).

So it really seems like you will be stuck with the workarounds in Benedikt's post.

Recommendation: You could fill the adjacent cells with tick characters (') using Benedikt's first, very clever method. This way you don't have to hide anything, prevent cell overflow and if you copy the cells as text (let's say to notepad) you still get empty text and not spaces, ticks, or any other filler characters for these cells.

Here's how I do it.

1. Option 1: Fill all empty cells with a "N/A" and then use Conditional Formatting to make the text invisible.
2. Or Option 2: Fill all empty cells with 0 and use an Excel setting to hide zero values.

Filling all empty cells: (tested on a Mac)

• Edit → Go To... → Special ... (On Windows: Home → Editing → Find & Select → Go To Special...)
• Select "Blanks" and hit OK.
• All blank cells are selected now. Don't click anything.
• Type "N/A" or 0, and then hit Ctrl+Enter^†. This will insert the value into all selected cells.

Conditional Formatting to Hide "N/A"

• Format → Conditional Formatting.
• Create new rule.
• Style: Classic, and Use a formula to determine which cells to format.
• Formula: =A1="N/A"
• Format with: Custom Format: Font color white, no fill.

Hide Zeros

• Excel → Settings → View.
• Untick "Show zero values".

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^†  That's Ctrl+Enter, not Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

Try entering the formula ="" (that's two double quotes) in the adjacent cell where you don't want to see the overflow. This evaluates to "null" which displays nothing and won't affect math.