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my simple textarea doesn't show a horizontal bar when text overflows. It wraps text for a new line. So how do I remove wordwrap and display horizontal bar when text overflows?

Panagiotis Panagi
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StoneHeart
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6 Answers6

180
textarea {
  white-space: pre;
  overflow-wrap: normal;
  overflow-x: scroll;
}

white-space: nowrap also works if you don't care about whitespace, but of course you don't want that if you're working with code (or indented paragraphs or any content where there might deliberately be multiple spaces) ... so i prefer pre.

overflow-wrap: normal (was word-wrap in older browsers) is needed in case some parent has changed that setting; it can cause wrapping even if pre is set.

also -- contrary to the currently accepted answer -- textareas do often wrap by default. pre-wrap seems to be the default on my browser.

Alexis Wilke
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Partly Cloudy
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155

Textareas shouldn't wrap by default, but you can set wrap="soft" to explicitly disable wrap:

<textarea name="nowrap" cols="30" rows="3" wrap="soft"></textarea>

EDIT: The "wrap" attribute is not officially supported. I got it from the german SELFHTML page (an english source is here) that says IE 4.0 and Netscape 2.0 support it. I also tested it in FF 3.0.7 where it works as supposed. Things have changed here, SELFHTML is now a wiki and the english source link is dead.

EDIT2: If you want to be sure every browser supports it, you can use CSS to change wrap behaviour:

Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), you can achieve the same effect with white-space: nowrap; overflow: auto;. Thus, the wrap attribute can be regarded as outdated.

From here (seems to be an excellent page with information about textarea).

EDIT3: I'm not sure when it changed (according to the comments, must've been around 2014), but wrap is now an official HTML5 attribute, see w3schools. Changed the answer to match this.

YakovL
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schnaader
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  • wrap seems not a textarea properties... or maybe it deprecated? http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_textarea.asp – Dels Mar 18 '09 at 11:19
  • Yes, it seems it's unofficial - thanks for the hint, I'll edit my answer. – schnaader Mar 18 '09 at 11:35
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    The "wrap" attribute works in Firefox 3.6, but isn't valid HTML5. However, the CSS solution doesn't work, as if "white-space:nowrap" is ignored. – Clint Pachl Mar 21 '11 at 21:56
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    To add to @clint-pachl, you cannot change the value of the `wrap` property once the textarea has been rendered. – Shamasis Bhattacharya Mar 28 '11 at 19:11
  • One more interesting attribute is http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_word-break.asp, where chrome uses the undocumented "break-all" value for a textarea. Trying this on a div didn't work for me (to get it to wrap). – Aram Kocharyan Aug 04 '11 at 11:43
  • FireFox 18 still seems to be ignoring the CSS "white-space" property for textarea atleast. IE 9 stop the wrapping but I couldn't find a "white-space" value to allow you to enter a new line. The HTML attribute wrap="off" though seems to be supported by both (and from what I've read, all other major browsers), though IE does paint in disabled scroll bars by default and enables them as required, so the CSS overflow:auto; is stil desirable. Would have liked a purely CSS solution but I think the white-space property is more concerned with pre-existing content and not user input. – Swanny Jan 29 '13 at 02:00
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    `white-space: pre;` (or `pre-line`/`pre-wrap`) had the same affect as `wrap="off"` for me (whereas `white-space: nowrap` didn't respect the `padding`) – philfreo Mar 18 '13 at 21:34
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    @ClintPachl Actually, `wrap` is valid HTML5... it's settings are now `"hard"` and `"soft"` ([ref](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/textarea#attr-wrap)) – Mottie Apr 04 '14 at 03:35
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    @Mottie It would be much better to link to current version of HTML5 specification than to Mozilla docs. Here's the link for current version – http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/CR-html5-20140731/forms.html#attr-textarea-wrap – Piotr Dobrogost Sep 10 '14 at 14:08
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    `white-space: nowrap` is *eevil*, it collapses white spaces! http://jsfiddle.net/3zsvbsdo/6/ (at least in chrome)... – Adrian Föder Jan 23 '15 at 12:35
  • @FlashThunder: Thanks, changed the answer to reflect some changes (SELFHTML, dead links, wrap being official HTML5 with `soft`/`hard` values now) – schnaader Aug 17 '15 at 11:13
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    "Textareas shouldn't wrap by default" [citation needed], I just tried IE10, Chrome 45.0.2454.93, FF 38 ESR, all of them wrap by default when you start typing or when you put text in: https://jsfiddle.net/502qycsn/ – ToastyMallows Sep 21 '15 at 14:15
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    The only way I could get IE 9 - 11 to behave like the other browsers was wrap="off". wrap="soft" had no effect. – Rand Scullard Feb 09 '17 at 21:16
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    `wrap="off"` is no longer valid however it is requirement for both IE and Edge! – Jools Dec 17 '18 at 11:06
  • `wrap="soft"` does nothing in Chrome 86. `wrap="off"` was needed. – Martin Grey Oct 22 '20 at 15:09
21

The following CSS based solution works for me:

<html>
 <head>
  <style type='text/css'>
   textarea {
    white-space: nowrap;
    overflow:    scroll;
    overflow-y:  hidden;
    overflow-x:  scroll;
    overflow:    -moz-scrollbars-horizontal;
   }
  </style>
 </head>
 <body>
  <form>
   <textarea>This is a long line of text for testing purposes...</textarea>
  </form>
 </body>
</html>
Galghamon
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17

I found a way to make a textarea with all this working at the same time:

  • With horizontal scrollbar
  • Supporting multiline text
  • Text not wrapping

It works well on:

  • Chrome 15.0.874.120
  • Firefox 7.0.1
  • Opera 11.52 (1100)
  • Safari 5.1 (7534.50)
  • IE 8.0.6001.18702

Let me explain how i get to that: I was using Chrome inspector integrated tool and I saw values on CSS styles, so I try these values, instead of normal ones... trial & errors till I got it reduced to minimum and here it is for anyone that wants it.

In the CSS section I used just this for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari:

textarea {
  white-space:nowrap;
  overflow:scroll;
}

In the CSS section I used just this for IE:

textarea {
  overflow:scroll;
}

It was a bit tricky, but there is the CSS.

An (x)HTML tag like this:

<textarea id="myTextarea" rows="10" cols="15"></textarea>

And at the end of the <head> section a JavaScript like this:

 window.onload=function(){
   document.getElementById("myTextarea").wrap='off';
 }

The JavaScript is for making the W3C validator passing XHTML 1.1 Strict, since the wrap attribute is not official and thus cannot be an (x)HTML tag directly, but most browsers handle it, so after loading the page it sets that attribute.

Hope this can be tested on more browsers and versions and help someone to improve it and makes it fully cross-browser for all versions.

Alexis Wilke
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z666zz666z
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6

This question seems to be the most popular one for disabling textarea wrap. However, as of April 2017 I find that IE 11 (11.0.9600) will not disable word wrap with any of the above solutions.

The only solution which does work for IE 11 is wrap="off". wrap="soft" and/or the various CSS attributes like white-space: pre alter where IE 11 chooses to wrap but it still wraps somewhere. Note that I have tested this with or without Compatibility View. IE 11 is pretty HTML 5 compatible, but not in this case.

Thus, to achieve lines which retain their whitespace and go off the right-hand side I am using:

<textarea style="white-space: pre; overflow: scroll;" wrap="off">

Fortuitously this does seem to work in Chrome & Firefox too. I am not defending the use of pre-HTML 5 wrap="off", just saying that it seems to be required for IE 11.

JonBrave
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  • Nice one, saved my day! Was breaking my head over why programmatically adding newlines failed using the code from the accepted answer. – Tum Feb 24 '18 at 19:07
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    This IE bug has also been transferred to Edge – Jools Dec 17 '18 at 11:03
4

If you can use JavaScript, the following might be the most portable option today (tested Firefox 31, Chrome 36):

http://jsfiddle.net/cirosantilli/eaxgesoq/

<style>
  div#editor {
    white-space: pre;
    word-wrap: normal;
    overflow-x: scroll;
  }
<style>
<div contenteditable="true"></div>

There seems to be no standard, portable CSS solution:

Also, if you can use Javascript, you might as well use the ACE editor:

http://jsfiddle.net/cirosantilli/bL9vr8o8/

<script src="http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/ace/1.1.3/ace.js"></script>
<div id="editor">content</div>
<script>
  var editor = ace.edit('editor')
  editor.renderer.setShowGutter(false)
</script>

Probably works with ACE because it does not use a textarea either which is underspecified / incoherently implemented, but not sure if it is uses contenteditable.

Community
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Ciro Santilli Путлер Капут 六四事
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    +1 Out of all the answers here, the CSS here is the only one that works reliably on both Chrome and Safari's textarea. Other answers just work on Chrome only – Michael Buen Nov 17 '21 at 05:37