overflow:auto when textarea has content by default?

Question

Hey

This is a problem, that has annoyed me for a long time. If I have a textarea with long text in it, overflow doesn't work, even if content goes over the visible area. How to fix this?

Martti Laine

Answer 1

Do you have a height set on your area? (Also, I am assuming this not a <textarea> but a <div> or something like that).

Answer 2

So, you want the text to wrap when you manually enter text? If you are using a <textarea> control, you might try setting the height and width:

<textarea id="test" style="width:300px; height:50px">
    The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
</textarea>

Answer 3

From the comments:

Horizontal is the goal. It is set at scroll/auto, but contents of the textarea are still wrapped. If I write manually something to textarea, it doesn't wrap.

So you basically want to disable the wrapping of lines? Add white-space: nowrap; to the style. This has another impact however: you cannot display nor insert newlines in the textarea anymore.