How to Remove Line Breaks in Excel

Find and Replace (no formula)

1. Select the cells.
2. Ctrl+H.
3. Click in Find what and press Ctrl+J. The box looks empty — a tiny dot may blink. That’s the line break.
4. In Replace with, type a space (or a comma and space).
5. Replace All.

If nothing is found, clear the Find box fully and press Ctrl+J only once.

With a formula

=SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(10)," ")

CHAR(10) is the line break. Replace with “, ” for addresses.

Text from a Mac or the web

It may contain CHAR(13) too. Remove both:

=TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(13),""),CHAR(10)," "))

CLEAN

=CLEAN(A2) removes line breaks and other non-printing characters, but joins the words with no space. Use SUBSTITUTE if you need the space.

Cell still looks tall

Turn off wrap text or AutoFit the row height.

Adding a line break instead

Alt+Enter while typing, or =A2&CHAR(10)&B2 with wrap text on.

More cleanup: remove special characters · remove spaces