line length line break issue

we had someone make a php app that was a form fill-in type of questionaire.
They stored all data into postgres as vchar type columns.  Now the problem we
have is that
1) rows retrieved from select include cr/lf chars from the form, makeing a row
multi lines long
2) rows are so long that their not useable and we can find a useable delimeter

I've tried using
\pset recordsep "^"
 (and other chars along with the caret) but it seems the postgress is not
using that character.  My thinking was to strip all cr/lf, the replace the
caret with a newline.  Then we could bring the data into something like
excel.

The problem is the recordsep doesn't seem to work.  Any thoughts?
--
David Bear
College of Public Programs/ASU