Remove line breaks from cells in Excel
This tutorial provides three formulas to help you removing line breaks (which are occurred by pressing Alt + Enter keys in a cell) from specific cells in Excel.
Remove line breaks with CLEAN function
Remove line breaks with TRIM function
Remove line breaks with SUBSTITUTE function
Remove line breaks with CLEAN function
Generic formula
=CLEAN(text)
Argument
Text: The text you want to remove line breaks from. It can be:
- 1. The text string enclosed in quotation marks;
- 2. Or a reference to a cell containing the text string.
How to use this formula?
1. Select a blank cell to output the result.
2. Enter the below formula into it and press the Enter key. Then drag the Fill Handle down to apply the formula to other cells.
=CLEAN(B3)
Note: If there are other non-printable characters existing in the cell, the CLEAN function will remove them too.
Remove line breaks with TRIM function
Generic formula
=TRIM(text)
Argument
Text: The text you want to remove line breaks from. It can be:
- 1. The text string enclosed in quotation marks;
- 2. Or a reference to a cell containing the text string.
How to use this formula?
1. Select a blank cell to output the result.
2. Enter the below formula into it and press the Enter key. Then drag the Fill Handle down to apply the formula to other cells.
=TRIM(B3)
Note: The TRIM function removes not only the line breaks, but also all extra spaces and keeps single spaces between words.
Remove line breaks with SUBSTITUTE function
Generic formula
=SUBSTITUTE(cell,CHAR(10),"")
Argument
Cell: The cell contains line breaks you want to remove.
How to use this formula?
1. Select a blank cell to output the result without line breaks.
2. Enter the below formula into it and press the Enter key. And then drag the Fill Handle to apply the formula to other cells.
=SUBSTITUTE(C5,CHAR(10),"")
Note: In this case, all line breaks in specific cells are replaced with empty texts. If you want to replace the line breaks with other specific characters, such as comma, please enclose the comma inside the quotation marks as the below formula shown:
=SUBSTITUTE(C5,CHAR(10),",")
Related functions
Excel CLEAN function
The Microsoft Excel CLEAN function is used to remove all non-printable characters from the given text.
Excel TRIM function
The Excel TRIM function removes all extra spaces from text string and only keeps single spaces between words.
Excel SUBSTITUTE function
The Microsoft Excel SUBSTITUTE function replaces text or characters within a text string with another text or characters.
Excel CHAR function
The Microsoft Excel CHAR function returns the character specified by a number which from 1 to 255.
Related formulas
Remove text from cell by matching the content
This article shows you how to use the SUBSTITUTE function to remove part of text string from specified cells by matching content.
Remove text from a cell based on specific position
This tutorial explains how to use formulas to remove text from a cell based on specific position in Excel.
Remove text based on variable position in Excel
This tutorial explains how to remove text or characters from a cell when it locates in variable position.
Remove unwanted characters from cell in Excel
You can use the SUBSTITUTE function to remove any unwanted characters from a specific cell in Excel.
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