This starts to look like a bug in Spreadsheet::WriteExcel::Simple or Spreadsheet::WriteExcel to me

The following example might clarify what is happening:

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w


    use strict;
    use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;

    my $workbook    = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new("reload.xls");
    my $worksheet   = $workbook->addworksheet();
    my $format      = $workbook->addformat(text_wrap=> 1);

    my $str         = "A\nB\nC";

    $worksheet->write('B2', $str         );
    $worksheet->write('B4', $str, $format);
[download]

This produces an Excel file that looks a little like this except the square described by artist is shown as an underline:

     ------------------------------------------
    |   |   A   |   B   |   C   |   D   |  ...
     ------------------------------------------
    | 1 |       |       |       |       |  ...
    | 2 |       | A_B_C |       |       |  ...
    | 3 |       |       |       |       |  ...
    |   |       | A     |       |       |  ...
    |   |       | B     |       |       |  ...
    | 4 |       | C     |       |       |  ...
    | 5 |       |       |       |       |  ...
    | 6 |       |       |       |       |  ...
    |...|  ...  |  ...  |  ...  |  ...  |  ...
[download]

The difference is caused by the presence of the format (which is missing from artist's code). This can also be verified within Excel by toggling the Format->Cells->Alignment->Wrap Text option.

As such, I don't think that this is a bug. :-)

And just to clarify a point raised in some of the other nodes. The character required to generate a wrap is \n (0x0A) and not \r (0x0D). Here is a hexdump of the wrapped ABC string taken from a real Excel file:

    41 0a 42 0a 43
[download]

--
John.