Adding Line Breaks in a CSV File

A CSV file is a Comma Separated Values file. And it can be opened very easily in Microsoft Excel.

Most people use data files coming from main frame computers, or other external applications, and export the data in the CSV format, as it is easy to create, access and use. The other alternative is to create a Excel file (ending with .xls or .xlsx extension), but it is quite difficult to achieve in most legacy applications.

Thus, the CSV format has come to stick, and is one of the most popular methods to transfer data from one application to another.

Microsoft Excel has the capability to read and create CSV files easily.

In Excel, you can write text in a any worksheet cell, and it can span into many lines. Sometimes, if you have a long comment, you can split it into different row lines also.

a long comment in excel, keyed in multiple lines, but in the same single cell

 

 

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How do you create a CSV file, which contains a long line, split into multiple rows?

Simply use  Quotation marks to enclose the data which spills into multiple lines. see below:

Department, Status
Manufacturing,“No new issues.
Previous issues need to
be addressed”
Sales, “No issues”.

Once you load such a file into Excel, it will automatically show the complete data, in a single cell.

That’s it… it is such a simple and neat trick.. and helped me numerous times..

Additional Resources:

Enjoy,

Vinai Prakash

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