Fill RTF placeholder with php string that contains line breaks and tabs - php

Question

I have a function on my php site that fills rtf templates with customer data.
It replaces placeholders that look like this %%PLACEHOLDER%%.
Now I want to replace a placeholder with a string that has tabs and line breaks in it. I can't figure out how to do this. I did read this post but the anwser doesn't work for me. In the final file it just displays {\pard\par} in plain text.
Replace function:
function populate_RTF($vars, $doc_file)
{
$replacements = array ('\\' => "\\\\",
'{' => "\{",
'}' => "\}");
$document = file_get_contents($doc_file);
if(!$document) {
return false;
}
foreach($vars as $key=>$value) {
$search = "%%".strtoupper($key)."%%";
foreach($replacements as $orig => $replace) {
$value = str_replace($orig, $replace, $value);
}
$document = str_replace($search, $value, $document);
}
return $document;
}
File where I use the function:
function MakeString()
{
foreach(/*for each here*/)
{
$string = $name. "\tab" . $gpu . "\tab" . $cpu . "{\pard\par}";
$string .= $name. "\tab" . $gpu . "\tab" . $cpu . "{\pard\par}";
$string .= $name. "\tab" . $gpu . "\tab" . $cpu . "{\pard\par}";
}
return $string;
}
$vars = array
(
'name' => $info['name'],
'address' => $info['address'],
'phone' => $info['phone'],
'string-here' => MakeString(),
);
$new_rtf = populate_RTF($vars, $template);
$fr = fopen($saveLocation.$filename, 'w') ;
fwrite($fr, $new_rtf);
fclose($fr);
RTF output now is:
John \tabAsus GTX 1060\tabIntel I7{\pard\par}Mike\tabAsus GTX 1080\tabAMD FX 8120{\pard\par}
RTF output should be:
John Asus GTX 1060 Intel I7
Mike Asus GTX 1080 AMD FX 8120
Someone that can help me with this?