Problem formatting a column to justify (i.e. line wrap)

I'm new to gnumeric and have not used any spreadsheet since mid 70's.
I'm running Debian 9.1 with MATE desktop and gnumeric 1.12.32 .

I have 2 columns with potentially long lines.
I had no problem selecting a preferred font size.
I created a spreadsheet allowing cells with with long lines to truncate 
when displayed.

I then chose to justify. An inappropriate column with had been set 
initially resulting in row height of 3 lines of text. I manually dragged 
the column separator to an appropriate width resulting in a desired 
height of 2 lines of text.

That row is stuck at a height of 3 lines of text.

How can I force each line to be *NO* taller than necessary to for the 
currently longest line?

TIA