- Microsoft word find and replace hard return how to#
- Microsoft word find and replace hard return code#
In the example below, there are three more instances of “Williams,” but we only want to replace the next two. To replace all instances at once without stopping and reviewing each one, you can click the “Replace All” button.īe careful when using “Replace All” because it will automatically replace all instances, including those you might not want to replace. Click the “Replace” button to replace the currently selected result with whatever text is in the “Replace With” box. Ridiculous that Excel requires you to spend ages on simple problems like this.Word jumps the document to that point and highlights the result in gray, still keeping the Find and Replace window on top for you. You could perhaps use SUBSTITUTE to replace NL with % or something like that. I realise that my circumstances are not the same as everyone else's but it may help. Keeping all of sheet 2 selected, Find-and-replace % with nothing at all. So now sheet 2 only contains text, most of which is cells containing a single %.Ĥ. Select all of sheet 2, copy, and paste special / values. For me, this meant that all the cells with just one or two invisible NLs now appeared as % in sheet 2. In sheet 2, R1C1, enter the formula =IF(LEN(Sheet1!RC)<5,"%",Sheet1!RC) where "%" is any convenient character that does not appear in sheet 1. Create sheet 2 to receive the manipulated data from sheet 1.Ģ. Eventually I realised that a combination of CLEAN and a few other things did the job.ġ. Using a Mac, and latest Excel, I couldn’t get any of the find-and-replace ideas to work. I had a situation where I had some cells with NLs in text, which I wanted, and a large number of cells with one or two spurious NLs that I wanted rid of.
Microsoft word find and replace hard return how to#
Then see how to find the line breaks in Excel, and replace them with space characters.Īuthor Debra Dalgleish Posted on JCategories Excel tips Watch this short video, to see the steps for adding a line break in a cell.
Be sure that you aren’t inserting more than one line break in the Find box - the Find box looks empty after you type Ctrl+J, so it is easy to accidentally type in there again.Or, try the next tip - you might have extra line breaks in the Find box. Try doing this find and replace when you first open Excel, before using the Find box for any other searches.If the Excel file has never been saved, try saving the file before doing this find and replace.If Ctrl + J does not work, press the Alt key, and type 0010 on the number keypad (do not use the numbers above the letters).Thank you to everyone who commented, and added suggestions. Update: Here are a few tips and troubleshooting suggestions, to use while you find and replace line breaks in Excel. Get more Excel data entry tips on my Contextures website. NOTE: If these steps don’t work, try the tips and troubleshooting suggestions below. OR, click Replace or Replace All, to replace the line breaks with space characters.Then, click Find Next or Find All, to find the cells with line breaks.Press the Tab key on the keyboard, to move to the Replace With box.On the keyboard, press Ctrl + J to enter the line break character - NOTE: No text will appear in the Find What box - just a small blinking dot.On the keyboard, press Ctrl + H to open the Find and Replace dialog box, with the Replace tab active.Select the cells that you want to search.There is a video below, that shows the steps. To find a line break, and replace it with a space character, follow these steps.
Microsoft word find and replace hard return code#
Why does that work? A line break is character 10 in the ASCII character set, and the Ctrl + J shortcut is the ASCII control code for character 10.
Instead of using Alt + Enter, you can use a special shortcut to enter a line break in the Find What box: Ctrl + J
Excel won’t let you put that shortcut into the Find What box. However, if you try to type Alt + Enter in the Find What box, you’ll just hear a beep from your computer. To find specific text in Excel, you can use Ctrl + F to open the Find and Replace dialog box. Line breaks are easy to add, but a little trickier to remove. But how can you find and replace line breaks in Excel? You can put one or more line breaks in a cell, to make the contents easier to read. When you want to create a line break (line feed) in a cell, you press Alt + Enter, to start a new line.