35

When I copy text from a cell in Excel and paste into a text document a line break is appended.

Example:

<a href="#">Some Link</a>

CTRL-C/CTRL-V

<a href="http://www.domain.com
">Some Link</a>

Is it possible to copy as plain text without additional line breaks added?

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5
  • Can't you press F2 and copy the cell's contents?
    – Karan
    Jan 29, 2013 at 20:01
  • F2 edits a cell
    – Charles Wesley
    Jan 29, 2013 at 20:03
  • 4
    What Karan means is, that you press F2 → Select the cell content with your arrow keys → copy&paste it with CTRL+C and CTRL+V
    – nixda
    Jan 29, 2013 at 20:06
  • Ah I understand. That does work. If one of you posts as an answer I'll accept it. Thank you!
    – Charles Wesley
    Jan 29, 2013 at 20:08
  • 1
    An equivalent question on StackOverflow has a macro-based answers that minimizes keystrokes.
    – Edward Brey
    Jul 9, 2015 at 21:40

2 Answers 2

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16

Ctrl+C > Ctrl+V > Backspace is probably better than the accepted answer due to fewer key strokes. I know this doesn't really answer the question, it sounds like your question is really a feature request. As mentioned in the comments here is a macro solution as well:

https://stackoverflow.com/q/14695836/145173

Sounds like too much work to me to avoid a backspace key stroke. If it's large grabs and pulls, I would just suggest using Notepad++'s advanced find/replace and exploit the \n\r\t characters that are the real text appended to the copy/paste and replace them with nothing.

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11

Simply press F2 to edit the cell, select all text (Shift+Home ought to do it, or Ctrl+Shift+Home for multi-line cell), then copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) without line breaks being added.

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4
  • 1
    BTW, here's a macro and AHK script if you want to do this for lots of cells and want to make things easier. See here if you want help with adding a reference to the Microsoft Forms 2.0 Object Library required to make that macro work.
    – Karan
    Jan 29, 2013 at 20:20
  • 9
    This method doesn't work if the cell contains a formula and you want to copy the computed value.
    – Edward Brey
    Apr 1, 2017 at 3:54
  • 3
    This answers the question at the cost of added keystrokes compared to simple backspace answer below.. not really a good solution
    – Aniti
    Jun 27, 2017 at 10:18
  • 2
    What an idea stands behind the scenes to add new line to content being copied??? !!!!
    – Bronek
    May 25, 2020 at 20:32

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