Best Practice for New Lines in Excel during import

Author: Grant Rhodes
Date: September 25th, 2025 
Audience: Everyone
Environmental Details: Jama Connect®

Use Case

The way new lines in Excel are treated during the import to Jama Connect depends on the way the line breaks are documented in Excel and the type of the destination field.

Best Practice

When importing into a Rich Text Text Box, make sure that the Line Breaks are documented with valid HTML tags.

Implementation

There are 3 types of text fields available in Jama Connect,

• Text Field: Holds plain text strings with no line breaks.

  • When importing from Excel into a Text Field, line breaks will always be ignored.

• Plain text Text Box: Holds more data than a typical Text field in plain text. Can include line breaks and have a template applied to it.

  • When importing from Excel into a plain-text Text Box, line breaks will be recognized and displayed correctly in the field.

• Rich text Text Box: Holds more data than a typical Text field rich text. Can include line breaks and have a template applied to it.

  • When importing from Excel into a Rich-text Text Box, line breaks will be ignored if valid HTML tags for breaks are not present.

    • Place a <br> tag at the end of each line to denote a line break.

    • The tag will result in a new line being displayed in the Rich Text field.

References

• Success Programs
• Success Catalog
• Datasheets
• Request a Solution Offering or Training from the Success Catalog

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