Forum Discussion
Find And Replace to Add Line Breaks within Cells
In case anyone else stumbles on this question, this is the answer for an in-cell line break
Ctrl+H to bring up the Replace popup
Find What = ,
Replace With = here press "Ctrl+J"
Press Replace
- swens2005Jul 15, 2025Copper Contributor
You are a hero!! I've been looking for this for 15 years! :)
- Gracey56Apr 14, 2025Copper Contributor
Excel does not recognise "Ctrl J" in the find/replace dialog box, in Word you can enter "special characters" there is no option for this in Excel
- PhurtisMay 22, 2025Copper Contributor
Try Shift + Ctrl + J
sometimes Ctrl-J works, for some you may need to use the Shift key also. It worked with the Shift key for me; didn't try just Ctrl-J, I found the (better) Ctrl + Shift + J answer elsewhere.
^10 should also work.
If neither of those work, you can always try Alt+0010 on the numeric keypad (note that is four digits, not three).
- 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)
^13 or Alt-0013 will work for the Carriage Return ASCII 13 character.
- HansVogelaarApr 14, 2025MVP
I don't know about other platforms, but Excel for Windows does recognize Ctrl+J in the Find/Replace dialog. You should see the insertion point (the blinking vertical bar) disappear except for one pixel.
- Gracey56Apr 14, 2025Copper Contributor
Thank you yes, the killer is the different behaviour of Word which actually displays ^l (L) for line feed. This was compounded by Excel not recognising a tilde ~ which was the character I was trying to replace. Exactly why MS cannot get two of the key products to behave in the same way is rather strange.
- HansVogelaarFeb 26, 2025MVP
That was the suggestion in the first reply. The OP never responded.