Text does not ellipsize

Question

I have a TextView set to ellipsize but when I put the text in it doesn\'t do so. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Only works runtime, do something like this:

textView.setEllipsize(TruncateAt.END);
textView.setLines(1);
textView.setHorizontallyScrolling(true);
textView.setText("Long text goes here");

Answer 2

You can as well set maxLines like so:

        <TextView
            android:id="@+id/txt_title"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:maxLines="3"
            android:ellipsize="end"
            android:textStyle="bold"/>

Ellipses appear when the text exceeds the maxLines set.

Answer 3

If you are trying to get multiline ellipsis working, unfortunately it doesn't work very well. This is a known bug in the Android platform and as far as I know it hasn't been fixed.
In a TextView the best you can get is 2 lines ellipsizing (which can be achieved by setting

android:maxLines="2"

Refer to this link.
Even with an absolute width as mentioned in another answer, it still only gives you at max, 2 lines of ellipsis. (But as mentioned also, single line ellipsis is achievable). So for example, your text might fill your 8 line TextView, but will look like this when you turn ellipsis on:

+---------------------------------------------------+
|                                                   |
| This is my cool text that is supposed to fill the |
| entire textview but unfortunately because of t... |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
|                                                   |
+---------------------------------------------------+

If you know the size of your TextView, you can use a custom component available here (Unfortunately the google code project that originally hosted it seems to have disappeared, hence this link is all I could find).

Answer 4

android:layout_width="wrap_content"

will allow the TextView to expand as long as it needs to (including running off the screen). To make it ellipsize, you're going to have to set a width as citizen conn recommended, preferably with android:layout_width="fill_parent" instead of an absolute value.

Additional hints: You'll also want to set the maxLines of the TextView (probably to 1), and to get the actual ellipsis ("...") to appear, you'll probably also have to set

android:scrollHorizontally="true"

Answer 5

I think you need to specify an absolute width for it to work.

android:layout_width="100dip"

or

android:layout_width="fill_parent"

Answer 6

android:maxWidth="150dp" was the only instance when text ellipsized for me.