Deleting strange formatting

[Guest]

I have copied and pasted text from a website into MS Word 2000. The text
only goes from the left side, to about 2/3 of the way to the right side of
the page.

I would like to get a "full" justification, getting the print to extend all
the way to the right edge of the page. I have clicked on the Full alginment
icon in the formatting toolbar. I have tried all the Ctrl+Q and every other
thing to get rid of the formatting, but still it is there and won't go over
to the right edge. What can I do?

 

[Guest]

The text you copied probably has hard returns at the end of each line
(possibly formatted in Plain Text). If that's the case. "auto wrap" isn't
going to work, and you'll have to manually change this line by line. Place
your cursor in front of the line you want to move up, hit "Backspace" and it
will move up and will perform auto wrap on that line only; you'd have to do
this for every line. I hope the text isn't extremely lengthy as this could
take a while on a long document.

Deb

 

[Jay Freedman]

I have copied and pasted text from a website into MS Word 2000. The text
only goes from the left side, to about 2/3 of the way to the right side of
the page.

I would like to get a "full" justification, getting the print to extend all
the way to the right edge of the page. I have clicked on the Full alginment
icon in the formatting toolbar. I have tried all the Ctrl+Q and every other
thing to get rid of the formatting, but still it is there and won't go over
to the right edge. What can I do?

See http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/CleanWebText.htm

 

[Guest]

Thanks for posting that link, Jay! I never knew there was an easy way to
handle this. I should have waited to see if there was a better solution
before offering my time-consuming method!

Deb

 

[Guest]

Jay, thanks for the link, but after pasting as unformatted text, doing a
search for ^l didn't find anything. Not too sure why, there were a slew of
those "paragraph" signs at the end of each line. Oh well. Looks like it will
be manual formatting.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Use the replace function to remove the extras which if paragraph marks are
^p not ^l.
Autoformat with the e-mail option may do it as may the Stripmail utility
which you can download from my web site.
--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Guest]

Graham, the page Jay linked to earlier said that the ^l would find hard
returns, whereas ^l^l would find paragraph returns (which is not what I was
looking for). The page said that the paragraph line actually was an
indicator of a hard return (manual line break). Or have I misunderstood
things?

 

[Graham Mayor]

^l is a line break - similar to pressing shift enter
^p is a paragraph break similar to pressing enter

You have to deal with what you actually have in your document - whether that
will be line breaks or paragraph breaks will depend on where it is copied
from. Display the formatting characters and see exactly what you have.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In emails and Web text, two line breaks are often used instead of a
paragraph break. What the article is suggesting is that ^l^l can be replaced
with ^p before deleting all the line breaks. This ensures that you maintain
the paragraph structure instead of getting one big blob of text.

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

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

OK Graham, I d/l the stripmail utility and I'll take it for a practice run
and see if it removes those line breaks. I ended up doing it all manually for
the doc in question (only a page and a half, it was doable) but for larger
chunks of text that would drive me batty. I'll post the results later this
week. Thanks for the hint.

 

[Guest]

Graham your stripmail utility is awesome. It took out those manual line
breaks when nothing else would. I now have it pinned to my start menu.
Thanks

 

[Graham Mayor]

I take no credit for the stripmail utility beyond hosting a version of it on
my web site, but I am pleased it worked for you.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>