Copy & pasting from Excel into Word

June 29, 2010 9:54 PM

Is there a way to insert into a text string in Excel a "hard enter" so that when a series of rows of text are copied into Word that it automatically incorporates paragraph breaks between them?

In other words, I have to copy say 10 rows of (long) text in Excel into Word. Then in Word, I have to seperate them manually by hitting enter.

I know that I can use the "spacing after" function to seperate the paragraphs, but the text needs to be purely single space.

Thanks

posted by notcostello to computers & internet (5 answers total)

alt-enter?
posted by mnemonic at 10:06 PM on June 29, 2010

I'm trying to understand what you're trying to do here. You say the text needs to be purely single spaced, but the feature you say you want (having a "hard enter" at the end of the Excel cell) will, by design, put an extra line space after each cell. You would end up with the default space after each cell, plus the extra space - double line spacing hard-coded in. Using a single line return after text, and adjusting the paragraph spacing is kind of the way it's supposed to be done.

Anyway, Alt-Enter (numeric keypad Enter, not the main Enter key) at the end of a cell seems to do the job for me.
posted by Jimbob at 10:18 PM on June 29, 2010

I will have to try the alt-enter at the office tomorrow as I am working from my laptop which doesn't have a numeric key pad.

For the alt-enter solution, do I need to add any operators?

What I am looking for is that each text string in Excel becomes a single space paragraph in Word and that between each of those paragraphs, there is automatically a space so that I do not have to do it manually.

I am open to any solution though.
posted by notcostello at 10:35 PM on June 29, 2010

You could always just put some specific nonsense characters at the end of the cells (say "~~"), and then do a search/replace in Word, replacing the nonsense with "^|" (or your formatting code of preference).
posted by pompomtom at 10:57 PM on June 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Is there a reason it has to be an ACTUAL blank line? Just set your paragraph style to include 10 or 12 points after, it's much more flexible that way.

Alternately, in Word, take 3 seconds and do 'replace ^p with ^p^p'; that's easier than sticking arbitrary "code symbols" into your Excel docume t.
posted by OneMonkeysUncle at 8:13 AM on June 30, 2010