How do I insert a space break in Google Sheets?

If you have ever wanted to create paragraphs or lists in a cell using Google Sheets, you likely have needed to implement what is known as a line break or hard return. Often, people just use separate cells or use text wrapping to simulate the same effect, but there is actually a way to do create paragraphs or lists within individual cells.

It's very easy – just a simple key combination.

When typing in the cell, key the combo:

Alt + Enter

or

Control + Enter

Either works to create line breaks within a single cell in Google Sheets. See the GIF below.

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If you’ve ever tried to add a line break within a cell in Google Sheets, you know it’s not as easy as it is in a text editor. Simply hitting enter on your keyboard exits edit mode, instead of adding a line break. So what do you do if you want to add a line break in Google Sheets? Fortunately there are a couple of handy features you can use to quickly add a line break anywhere in your cells. Read on to learn more.

Add a Line Break with Keyboard Shortcuts

Quick Navigation

The fastest way to add a line break is using the keyboard shortcut. This allows you to continue entering data without interrupting your flow. Here’s how:

Step 1

Select the cell you want to add a line break to and type in the text you want before the line break, then type CTRL+ENTER on your keyboard to insert a line break. Keep typing to add text after the line break.

Step 2

You can also add line breaks to cells that already have text in them. Simply double click on the cell to edit it then move your cursor to the desired location and CTRL+ENTER to insert the new line

Add a Line Break with Formulas

In some cases, text has to be automatically generated using formulas, making the manual method of adding line breaks unusable. For these cases, the formula method can be used instead.

Follow these steps to add line breaks to your formulas:

Step 1

For this example, we’ll use a simple text generating formula that counts the number of cells containing text in column A and outputs the number with a text label. The formula is: “=”Filled cells in Column A: ” & COUNTA(A:A)”

Step 2

To add line breaks to this formula, we combine the existing text with the CHAR(10) function, which generates a line break character. This function can be joined with any string using the standard string joining operator, the ampersand: &. So if we want to put the number calculated by the COUNTA() function on its own line, the formula would look like this: “=”Filled cells in Column A: ” & CHAR(10) & COUNTA(A:A)”.

Step 3

Note that you can add as many CHAR(10) functions to a formula as you want. For example, adding “& CHAR(10) & CHAR(10) &” to a formula will add 2 line breaks in a row, adding a blank line between paragraphs.

Summary

Example Spreadsheet: Make a copy of the example spreadsheet

In this tutorial, I covered how to line break in google sheets. Want more? Check out all the Google Sheets Tutorials.

You can get text to go across multiple lines in a cell without using line breaks by using text wrap formatting:

I've written a guide to text wrapping if you'd like to check it out.

How To Add A New Line / Line Break In A Cell In Google Sheets

While typing in a cell you can use a line break keyboard shortcut:

• Ctrl + Enter or Alt + Enter (for Windows)
• Ctrl + Return or Alt + Return or ⌘ + Return (for Mac)

⌘ + Return isn't the best option for Mac because it only lets you create one new line at a time.

Holding Ctrl or Alt is better as they let you press Return as many times as you need.

Here's what that looks like:

If you increase the height of one cell, the height of every cell in that row increases.

Using a line break might throw your sheet's formatting out of whack.

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How To Add A New Line / Line Break In A Formula In Google Sheets

If your formula only contains "text", you can still use the shortcuts from above:

• Ctrl + Enter or Alt + Enter (for Windows)
• Ctrl + Return or Alt + Return or ⌘ + Return (for Mac)

This is what it looks like:

If instead your formula refers to other cells and combines text from many cells into one you can concatenate multiple cells of text with an output from the CHAR function:

=CHAR(table_number)

The CHAR function allows you to generate Unicode characters using their decimal reference in the current Unicode table.

This can get you lots of useful and unusual characters (including emojis) but for our purposes we need character 10 - a 'line feed'.

When used in a formula like this:

="I want line"&CHAR(10)&"breaks in"&CHAR(10)&"this text"

You get the output you need:

A1I want line
breaks in
this text

You can also reference other cells instead of the text directly. In cell A4 we have the formula:

=A1&CHAR(10)&A2&CHAR(10)&A3

A1I want line2breaks in3this text4I want line
breaks in
this text

How To Add A New Line / Line Break In The Google Sheets iPhone & iPad Apps

Unfortunately you can't type line breaks using the Google Sheets iOS app. You can't even copy and paste line breaks into the app from other apps!

However, you can still add line breaks in formulas on the iPhone and iPad:

In cell A4 we have the formula:

=A1&CHAR(10)&A2&CHAR(10)&A3

A1I want line2breaks in3this text4I want line
breaks in
this text

How To Add A New Line / Line Break In The Google Sheets Android App

Using the Google Sheets Android app you can both type line breaks and add them in formulas.

To type a line break in text, you must press enter on the keyboard while at the end of a word:

The cell will be exited without a line break created if you press enter while not at the end of a word (e.g. after a space).

You can also use line breaks in formulas just as you would on the :

Replace Characters With Line Breaks In Google Sheets

You've got text that needs line breaks. Let's say it's a big column with data like this:

A11725 Slough Avenue, Scranton PA 18503

Addresses usually get split over multiple lines but going into each cell in the column and fixing this will take a really long time.

Let's write a formula to do the hard work quickly.

First let's use the SUBSTITUTE function:

=SUBSTITUTE(text_to_search, search_for, replace_with, [occurrence_number])

This searches the given text for something and replaces it with something else. It's powerful because you can even specify which occurrence to replace (the default is that all occurrences are replaced).

For the example:

=SUBSTITUTE(A1,", ",CHAR(10))

You could also use the function:

=REGEXREPLACE(text, regular_expression, replacement)

It does the same thing as the SUBSTITUTE function but provides a great ability to specify what you're searching for. However, it is more difficult to specify which occurrence to replace.

For the example:

=REGEXREPLACE(A1,", ",CHAR(10))

In most situations the SUBSTITUTE function will get you what you need and you don't have to worry about learning regular expressions.

Remove Line Breaks In Google Sheets

You've got line breaks but don't want them!

It'd be painful to go through and delete them all so let's write a formula to take care of it.

Here's your data:

A11725 Slough Avenue
Scranton PA
18503

How about the CLEAN function?

=CLEAN(text)

It removes all non-printable ASCII characters (which includes line breaks).

In the example above you could use in cell B1:

=CLEAN(A1)

To get:

AB11725 Slough Avenue
Scranton PA
185031725 Slough AvenueScranton PA18503

Slight problem… the line breaks have been removed but now there's nothing in their place, making the address useless.

Let's try the SUBSTITUTE function instead:

=SUBSTITUTE(text_to_search, search_for, replace_with, [occurrence_number])

To search_for a line break we'll use the handy CHAR function.

Using the example data, in cell B1 you could use:

=SUBSTITUTE(A1,CHAR(10)," ")

To get:

AB11725 Slough Avenue
Scranton PA
185031725 Slough Avenue Scranton PA 18503

Much better.

You could do even more by including a comma:

=SUBSTITUTE(A1,CHAR(10),", ")

AB11725 Slough Avenue
Scranton PA
185031725 Slough Avenue, Scranton PA, 18503

FREE RESOURCE

Google Sheets Cheat Sheet

12 exclusive tips to make user-friendly sheets from today:

Get The Cheat Sheet ➜

You'll get updates from me with an easy-to-find "unsubscribe" link.

Kieran Dixon started using spreadsheets in 2010. He leveled-up his skills working for banks and running his own business. Now he makes Google Sheets and Apps Script more approachable for anyone looking to streamline their business and life.

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How do I create a gap in Google Sheets?

Open the Format menu. Hover over Number and select Custom Number Format from the very bottom of the list of options. Select the Custom Number Format box. Press Space to insert empty spaces.

How do I add a space between text in Google Sheets?

To change your paragraph spacing, click Single, 1.15, 1.5, or Double. To change your spacing between paragraphs, click Remove space before paragraph or Add space after paragraph. To enter a custom size, click Custom spacing. Then, enter the size of the spacing you want before and after a paragraph and click Apply.

How do you break apart text in Google Sheets?

Select the text or column, then click the Data menu and select Split text to columns... Google Sheets will open a small menu beside your text where you can select to split by comma, space, semicolon, period, or custom character. Select the delimiter your text uses, and Google Sheets will automatically split your text.

How do you insert a line break in a spreadsheet?

To start a new line of text or add spacing between lines or paragraphs of text in a worksheet cell, press Alt+Enter to insert a line break. Double-click the cell in which you want to insert a line break (or select the cell and then press F2).