Weeellllll, ok MS Word lets you replace comma + ^013 which takes a comma plus the carriage returns/line feeds/^M and leave just the comma and concatenates any line which had previously a comma (or any other character) and a new line. Sure takes a long time, and much CPU. At least it works.

Would still like to know how to do this in vi or vim, as I remember needing this before. Thanks, Dan