Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Pasting Multiple Paragraphs Into a Single Cell.
David notes that when he pastes text from Word into Excel, Excel reads the paragraph marks as an instruction to move to the adjacent cell below, so that a block of Word text in 3 paragraphs, when pasted into cell A1 in Excel, will enter a paragraph into each of the cells A1, A2 and A3. David wonders how to paste the text as 3 paragraphs in cell A1.
The easiest way to do this type of pasting is to not paste to the cell, but into the cell. That may sound a bit confusing, but it needn't be. If you click a cell and then paste, Excel parses the Clipboard contents differently than if you double-click the cell. When you double-click, Excel enters edit mode, allowing you to edit the contents of the cell. (This can be done within the cell itself or within the Formula bar, depending on how you have Excel configured.) You can also jump into edit mode in a cell by pressing F2.
Once in edit mode, you can paste the multiple paragraphs into the single cell. The paragraph marks in the Word text are treated as end-of-line characters as if the text was entered into the cell with an Alt+Enter at the end of each paragraph. In addition, any font formatting or paragraph indenting will be lost with this method of pasting, and the cell will retain whatever formats were placed on it before the paste.
There is something to be aware of, however. Excel has a limit of 255 characters that can be entered into a cell. If you exceed that limit, then everything extra will be truncated. If the entry is long enough then it is possible to make Excel hang as it tries to figure out what you are doing, or even to crash. If you want to keep everything you are pasting from Word, then you might want to paste it into a text box, instead.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6736) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Pasting Multiple Paragraphs Into a Single Cell.
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2021-07-25 05:55:46
Philipp
Thank you so much for the tip to paste into the cell instead of to the cell.
I was starting to lose it when excel kept pasting each paragraph into a new cell, haha.
2018-10-06 16:54:16
Richard Euler
Regarding the article "Pasting Multiple Paragraphs Into a Single Cell," you state that the maximum number of characters in a cell is 255. (Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003) I have Excel 2002 SP3 on a Windows 97 computer, and I have a spreadsheet that contains cells which contain written visual descriptions of items. At least one of these cells has 800 characters in it, and very many cells which contain over 255 characters. None of these have been truncated. A quick search of the internet shows that a maximum of 32767 characters can be typed into a cell, without specifying the Excel version.
Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: 
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