Excel: replace a character or string with CR LF

This is a technique aimed at splitting up a long cumbersome string held in a single cell using new line breaks. It requires that we replace a normal character with the special characters [CR][LF].

Why would you want to do this?
Well sometimes it looks nice and it makes life easier, or it can make the data easier to scan through. I first used it to show ICD10 Diagnosis code strings from a concatanated string into a single readable cell.

To start off generate your file so that each part of the string that you want on a seperate line has a unique character (or unique string) at the end of the subsection.
In this example I’ve used “: ”
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Now highlight the section you want to change. Ctrl + A on a section etc.
Then bring up the find and replace dialog using Ctrl + H
In this example I needed to replace “: ” (thats colon followed by a space)
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Now place your cursor in the replace section:
Hold down ALT + 010 release (the ALT key) and then ALT + 013 then release again.
Press the replace all button and away it goes, It can take longer doing this than a normal find and replace.
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…and that’s what you get newlines instead of “: ”