How to append "...etc" to a cell of fixed size in Excel?

[chiron]

I am preparing a tender schedule and the item descriptions are of different lenghts. Is there any way to format the cell so that it only displays the first say 50 characters and then adds a " ...etc" at the end. I don't want the actual cells contents to be truncated though.

I can do it by setting the formula in another cell as;

=IF(LEN(B127)<=30, B127, CONCATENATE(LEFT(B127,30-8)," …etc."))

I want to know if it is possible to do so in cell formatting itself so that its dependent on the column width.

Any help in this regard would be appreciated

 

[asingh]

^^
Will it not still read the contents. How can you limit it using the column width.

 

[dinjo]

You need Macro