Excel - where is the default setting NEVER to wrap text?

Sorry about the delay. The problem happens unexpectedly.

I edited a cell that had a lot of text in it, using the editing box at the top of the sheet.  The cell at that stage was a small holding cell.  When I copied some new text into the editing box, the cell in the sheet expanded -uselessly. I have repeatedly set that column not to wrap.  As you can see all the text content in the cells around it  is more than the cell size. 

The expansion of the cell is extremely annoying. It disrupts the sheet and work process and needs an unproductive, unstable,  resetting of the cell to "do not wrap".  So the question above stands.

Is there a solution to this defect?

I was hoping that protecting the cell against wrapping would work - but wrong type of protection.

I have the same problem with importing text that Excel parses as a number, even though I have repeatedly assigned that column to be text.  I now have to corrupt the text to fool Excel into treating text as text.

Was the person who programmed Excel a goldfish, with no memory over a couple of seconds?