How can I remove many unwanted carriage returns all at once?

G

Guest

I have a document with hundreds of unnecessary carriage returns. How can I
delete them all without doing them one by one.
 
G

Guest

The document "Cleaning up text pasted from the Web" (CleanWebTextContent) is
only partially useful. I don't know about anyone else, but I couldn't get
the Autoformat tab of Tools > AutoCorrect to do anything.

Also, I think there is an error in the document. Under Second pass, I think
it should say, 1. In the "Find what" box, type ^p. If the "Second pass"
process is accurate, then the document never explains how to manually get rid
of the ^p (because the Autoformat tab of Tools > AutoCorrect doesn't do
anything).

The document says, "when you select a block of text with a paragraph break
at the end of teach full line, AutoFormat will delete all the paragraph
breaks but the last." This did not work for me. Maybe there is some other
step you need to do that the document does not explain.

Finally, if you use Find / Replace, and replace the pilcrow or paragraph
mark for a space one paragraph at a time, a dialog box appears after you
click "Replace All" (for the paragraph), that asks if you want Word to make
the replacements all the rest of the way through the document. If you
mistakenly click "Yes," Word not only replaces all pilcrows with a space, but
it also changes the font for the remainder of the document, and clicking
"Undo" will *not* undo it.

Tim Munyon
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Also, I think there is an error in the document. Under Second pass, I
think
it should say, 1. In the "Find what" box, type ^p. If the "Second pass"
process is accurate, then the document never explains how to manually get rid
of the ^p (because the Autoformat tab of Tools > AutoCorrect doesn't do
anything).
Click to expand...

No, the article is correct. The assumption is that each line ends in a line
break and each paragraph ends with two line breaks. First you replace each
pair of line breaks with a paragraph break, and then you replace the
remaining single line breaks with spaces (or nothing, if they are already
preceded by spaces). And you don't do this one paragraph at a time; you do
it for the entire block of pasted text. If you are replacing paragraph
breaks with spaces, then you are going beyond what the procedure is intended
to do.

Also, if the text you are starting with has a paragraph break (rather than a
line break) at the end of each line, then it doesn't meet the criteria. If
AutoFormat doesn't work on it, then you can use a different procedure,
assuming that there are two paragraph breaks (a "blank line") between
paragraphs:

1. Replace ^p^p with @@.

2. Replace ^p with a space (if needed).

3. Replace @@ with ^p.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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