Thanks to all for your helpful replies. In my initial email I did mistakenly
write "\n" when I had correctly been using "\n" in my code.

The key for me seem to be using the approach Bill suggested, i.e., writing
to a binary file. If I simply do

write.csv(d, "d.text.csv", row.names = FALSE, col.names = FALSE)

Then the newlines are not represented within the cell, but create new cells,
which is the problem I was originally having.

I do wonder what ASCII character is represented in Windows with alt-Enter.
I'm actually working in a Linux environment, its my boss who uses Windows. I
was trying to find a text only output that would do the trick. From my web
search I learned that using "alt", especially with the number pad, allows
for the entry of all sorts on unusual  ASCII characters. I found a couple
tables of them, but none referenced alt-Enter. Someone on a MS help site
suggested using the ASCII numerics "10" or "13", which I believe are just
new-line and line-feed. Those didn't work for me. I guess I'll be content
with having a working solution and leave the mystery unsolved.

Thanks Bill!

Mark

Mark W. Kimpel MD  ** Neuroinformatics ** Dept. of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

15032 Hunter Court, Westfield, IN  46074

(317) 490-5129 Work, & Mobile & VoiceMail
(317) 399-1219 Skype No Voicemail please


On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:13 PM, William Dunlap <wdunlap@tibco.com> wrote:

>
> > From: r-help-bounces@r-project.org
> > [mailto:r-help-bounces@r-project.org] On Behalf Of William Dunlap
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 10:47 AM
> > To: Duncan Murdoch; Mark Kimpel
> > Cc: r-help@r-project.org
> > Subject: Re: [R] ascii or regex code for alt-enter for Excel
> >
> > I think Excel wants a "\n" for newlines
> > in a text cell entry but "\r\n" to separate
> > rows of a csv file.  You may have to open
> > the file in binary mode and put in the \r\n
> > at line ends by hand to achieve this from R,
> > as it tranlates all "\n"s to "\r\n"s when
> > writing them to a file.
> >
> > ("\n" is not the same as "/n" in R.)
>
> I omitted an example:
>  d <- data.frame(nLines=c(3,2,1),
>     entry=c("three\nline\nentry",
>             "two line\nentry",
>             "one line entry"))
>  theFile <- file("c:/temp/d.csv", open="wb") # write in binary mode
>  write.csv(d, theFile, eol="\r\n")
>  close(theFile)
>
> Now c:/temp/d.csv in Excel and you should see the
> multiline text entries.  (Expand the cells and/or
> formula entry area to see all the lines in an entry.)
>
> > Bill Dunlap
> > Spotfire, TIBCO Software
> > wdunlap tibco.com
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: r-help-bounces@r-project.org
> > > [mailto:r-help-bounces@r-project.org] On Behalf Of Duncan Murdoch
> > > Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 10:29 AM
> > > To: Mark Kimpel
> > > Cc: r-help@r-project.org
> > > Subject: Re: [R] ascii or regex code for alt-enter for Excel
> > >
> > > On 20/10/2010 1:04 PM, Mark Kimpel wrote:
> > > > I need to write a table that can be opened in Excel or
> > > OpenOffice such that
> > > > there are newlines embedded within cells.
> > > >
> > > > After much Googling and futzing, I can't figure out how to
> > > do this. The way
> > > > to do this within Excel is alt-Enter and I've tried '/n',
> > > '/n/r', '/r/n' per
> > > > some web suggestions without luck.
> > >
> > > You may need to ask an Excel expert or MS tech support.  What
> > > character
> > > is Excel looking for?
> > >
> > > (Or it is possible that you have what you need, but used
> > > forward slashes
> > > when you should have used backslashes.  The newline character
> > > is \n, not
> > > /n, in R.)
> > >
> > > Duncan Murdoch
> > >
> > > > Anybody know what character or ASCII code to use for this?
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > > Mark W. Kimpel MD  ** Neuroinformatics ** Dept. of Psychiatry
> > > > Indiana University School of Medicine
> > > >
> > > > 15032 Hunter Court, Westfield, IN  46074
> > > >
> > > > (317) 490-5129 Work,&  Mobile&  VoiceMail
> > > > (317) 399-1219 Skype No Voicemail please
> > > >
> > > >   [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> > > >
> > > > ______________________________________________
> > > > R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> > > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > > > PLEASE do read the posting guide
> > > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > > > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> > >
> > > ______________________________________________
> > > R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > > PLEASE do read the posting guide
> > > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> > >
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guide
> > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
>

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

