This is a new one for me. I received a document where the text breaks at the right side of the cell and is not wordwrapping as it normally should. This means words are breaking anywhere giving results such as breaking the word "the" into "t" and "he" or the word "whereas" as Wher" "eas". I can't find anything where I can correct this.

Is it imported text, or did you type it? I ask because I wonder if there are non-breaking spaces in the text string.

It was a document supplied by someone. The only fix I have is to use the format painter on a known good cell and paste it over the offending cell. there are no non-breaking spaces.

I am not clear whether the format painter fixed the problem. If it did, are you still trying to find out what happened?
I will take your word for it that you have confirmed non-breaking spaces, but I don't see how the format painter would have changed that. If you paste the same text into another cell do you get the same result? How about if you paste text from another cell where it breaks properly into the cell where it does not? Can you delete an existing space and replace it by tapping the space bar?

I said there were NO non-breaking spaces. I'll just fix it with the format painter. It's a very long document with many tables and doing this one cell at a time is very time consuming. I was hoping someone it was some sort of setting change to allow me to make a global change.

I meant to say no non-breaking spaces.
I was (and still am) unclear as to whether this affects many cells or just a few. Since you can use the format painter from a good cell there clearly are at least some good cells.
The reason I suggested some tests (copying from a known good cell, typing an entry, etc.) is to try to narrow down if the problem is with the table cell or the format of the text being placed into it. Since it seems to be the text format, there may be a style involved. Maybe the bad cells are all a particular style, in which case you may be able to identify something that is different between the style that works properly and the style that doesn't. That is a setting that would apply to either the current document, or to all documents based on the template, depending on your choice. In any case, it is pretty close to being a global setting.

Very strange.
Depending on the nature of your table contents, you can drag the format painter over numerous contiguous cells, if they are all to be reformatted the same way.

Since this is a formatting issue, you could try removing local paragraph and character formatting and apply a known good style.

FWIW, it sounds suspiciously like a different language setting has been applied and Word is hiding this from you because you have not loaded the language pack that reveals this setting. See this related description - http://www.mraggarwal.com/2007/05/11.../#.VQITuPmUcQ0

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia