How to force word wrap in Excel cell for Word merge?

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Sarah R - 12 May 2008 16:52 GMT

In Excel, some of the field entries need to be multiple lines, so the data
were entered using [Alt+Enter]. However, after a merge [Alt+Enter] converts
into Word as a paragraph marker -- not the equivalent of Word's
[Shift+Enter].

In the Word merge document, there are typed labels at the beginning of a
line, followed by a [Tab] and then the merged data from Excel. For those
fields with [Alt+Enter] in Excel, the multiple lines begin at 0" (left
margin) rather than at the tab. (The style is set to tab and hanging indent
at 2.5", so the real issue is that the codes are interpreted in Word as
paragraph markers.)

Is there a special code or other trick to preserve line breaks from Excel
into Word?

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-- Sarah

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP - 12 May 2008 20:34 GMT

I believe that the issue is that Excel does not have the ability to insert a
hard line break. I does not have the equivalent of Shift + Enter in Word
and as you have discovered Excel's Alt+Enter is the same as Enter in Word.
The correct thing to have done in Excel would have been to format the cells
so that the text in them would wrap. It would then have been treated as
just one long string of data and would wrap in Word at the end of the line.

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Hope this helps.

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP

> In Excel, some of the field entries need to be multiple lines, so the data
> were entered using [Alt+Enter]. However, after a merge [Alt+Enter]
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> Is there a special code or other trick to preserve line breaks from Excel
> into Word?

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