Excel wraps text in a cell using the newline character "\n" and a format. The part that is missing from your code is the application of the format.

To fix this you need to access the underlying Spreadhsheet::WriteExcel workbook object and add a "text wrap" format as bart has shown above. There is some additional information here.

Another solution would be to use the Spreadhsheet::ParseExcel::SaveParser module which is a wrapper for Spreadhsheet::ParseExcel and Spreadhsheet::WriteExcel and which preserves cell formats when reading and writing a file.

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John.