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Searching for Line Breaks

Summary: If you have line breaks in some of the cells of your worksheet, you might want to search for them. There is no "special character" you can use for the search, like there is in Word. You can easily find the line breaks by using an ASCII code in the search parameters. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

Veronica was wondering how to search for a line break (Alt+Enter) in a cell. In Word you can search for ^l to find line breaks, but there does not seem to be a similar way to search for line breaks in Excel.

The answer is to remember that you can enter any ASCII code into the "Find What" box by holding down the Alt key and using the numeric keypad. Since the ASCII code for the line break is 10, you can follow these steps:

  1. Press Ctrl+F to display the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
  2. In the Find What box, hold down the Alt key as you type 0010 on the numeric keypad. It may not look like anything is in the Find What box, but the character is there.
  3. Click Find Next.

If you want to find cells containing a line break through a macro, you can use the following:

Sub FindLineBreak()
    WhatToFind = Chr(10)
    Cells.Select
    Selection.Find(What:=WhatToFind, After:=ActiveCell, _
      LookIn:=xlValues, LookAt:=xlPart, _
      SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
      MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False).Activate
End Sub

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3220) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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