Tame your computer - quick formatting fix

In her regular series for Cambridge Network members, software training expert Karen Roem offers handy tips to help you 'Tame your computer'. This week she describes how to add, find and remove line breaks (Microsoft Excel).

I don’t think I ever wrote a tip about how to add spacing between lines or paragraphs of text in Excel, but ALT + ENTER has definitely been a shortcut of the week on my home page and can be found in the shortcut archive. (Simply double-click where you want to insert the line break and press ALT + ENTER.)

But what if you inherit or import a file with lots of line breaks and you want to find and remove them?

Here’s how:

  1. Press CTRL+H to open the Find and Replace dialog box. (Or press CTRL+F if you just want to find the line breaks.)
  2. In the Find what box, press CTRL+J. (The box will look empty, but if you are very observant you will see a tiny flashing dot.)
  3. Press the TAB key on your keyboard, to move to the Replace with box. (Or use your mouse if you must ;)
  4. Press the SPACEBAR. (This will help separate all words; if necessary you can afterwards replace two spaces by one space. If you really just want to delete the line breaks, leave the Replace with box empty.)
  5. Click Replace All.

Please note CTRL+J seems to stick in the Find and Replace dialog box, i.e. you will see the tiny dot unless you closed down Excel in the meantime. To get rid of it, press the Delete key. (Backspace doesn’t work.)



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