getting hash marks instead of text (and making the cell bigger isn't working)

I have a perplexing problem.  In a spreadsheet I created, for others to fill out, there is a table.  In one column of the table a user is to type a brief description.  The cell is formatted to wrap text.  Cell is formatted for text.  Cell is formatted for 9 point font.  Row height is set at 64.50.  I merged five columns together (10.43 width for each column).  So, I have a cell that is 64.50 by 52.15.  In most cases, that should be enough room for what users will type. 

Someone typed in a couple of long sentences (letters, numbers, and punctuation marks), but all that appears on the screen are hash marks (#).  I know that signals that the cell is not large enough to display what is in it.  I increased the row height.  I still got hash marks.  (For printing purposes, I do not want to increase the column width, but I did try, and still got hash marks.)  I took the font size down to 6 and still got has marks.  I took out some of the words (65 characters in total) - went one-by-one, and eventually got the text to appear (thought at that point much was missing).  So it seems as though there are too many characters to display in the cell, but if I make the cell larger, the hash marks do not go away.  The amount of characters is 318 (that includes spaces), which I believe comes no where near the Excel character limit for a cell. 

I copied the text (not the cell, but just the text -- important distinction) to a cell outside the table and do not get hash marks.  When I copy the cell to another cell outside the table, I see nothing but hash marks on the monitor. 

In the other rows of the table, in the same column, hash marks are not displaying (and the formatting in the other rows for that same column is the same as the problem row) -- but in those cells the person typed less text.   

I expanded the height of a blank row elsewhere in the table and typed in the text.  I still got hash marks and the row height was plenty big enough.  When I removed from that cell the minimum number of words I discovered needed to be removed to make the text appear (65 characters), the text did appear and did not come close to filling up the entire cell. 

Based on all that I have done, it seems that the cells in this column will only accept so many characters, not matter how big I make the cell.  I don't understand why that is happening and how to fix.  Anyone out there have an explanation and a fix?