Thought I'd share a solution I have (FINALLY!!) found in case other people had experienced the same problem: If you have a text area field where the newlines are being ignored and showing up as little boxes, right click in the text area box then click on properties. Select the Format tab then scroll down to Numerical Shapes. Change this from System to Context and all the newlines reappear making your data finally make sense! Not really a Perl solution but it works so who cares!