How can I automatically eliminate all blank lines from a word doc

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I have a 900+ page document and more than half of contains blank lines. Is
there a way to automatically eliminate on the blank lines in the document?
 
Replace ^p^p with ^p. Do this until there are no replacements.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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Use Find and Replace: Find ^p^p (two consecutive paragraph marks) and
replace with ^p (one paragraph mark). Use Replace All repeatedly until
you stop finding any more.

You might also need to deal with lines that contain only spaces (which the
above won't match).
 
Thanks for your response. Tried your suggestion though Word indicated that
over 6500+ change were made, my doc was only reduced by 2 pages.

Is there another possible solution?
 
Did you try repeating it until you get no replacements?
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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Initially no...but I just tried on a 348 pg doc and following your
instructions until I had no more replacements reduced the doc down to 317 pgs.

However there are still large empty/blank sections in each page under the
"---------- Page Break--------" that are not effected by the process you
provided. These sections do not show any data element such line breaks or
paragraph breaks

Is there a method to eliminate these sections automatically. Alsi is there a
way to write macro to handled both processes to fully automate the formatting
of these docs
 
That is because a page break does just that. It starts a new page. It is not
a blank line.

Manual page breaks should be avoided for all sorts of reasons. You've just
found one.

Try replacing them all with paragraphs and then running the replace two
paragraphs with one replacement again.

Replace ^m with ^p.

I hope you are working with a copy.

--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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Could you write a macro? Yes. Should you? Probably not.

Such a macro (especially one eliminating page breaks) is as likely to make a
hash of a document as it is to make it better. If you do one, work with
copies.

Many people simply press the Enter key twice to start a new paragraph. Very
bad practice, but frequent. The number of ways that people can mess up a
document applying such direct formatting and acting as if they are typing on
a typewriter exceeds the ability of any reasonable macro to clean up.

The real key is to instill the use of proper styles to format documents. If
you don't have the ability to do this, if you can make the people who write
the stuff fix their own garbage, you will be ahead. Probably that is also
impractical. If you can itemize the expense caused by this garbage
formatting to try to justify better training, it might work. Still too
long-term for your immediate problem.

The following may help.
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/CleanWebText.htm
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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Charles

Thanks so much, it worked doc pgs went from 348 to 100. That is a huge step
in the right direction and will help me out a great deal.

Again, thank you
 
You are welcome.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
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