Replacing carriage returns with spaces in MS Word

[Wild Bill]

How can I replace a whole bunch of carriage returns in a part of a document
with spaces? I tried using Replace All, but MS Word would not accept a
carriage return as a character in the Find field. Would have been easy if it
did!

Sometimes I copy and paste e-mail messages into Word documents so I can
reformat them for reprinting, and when I do this from my e-mail program each
line within a paragraph ends up with a carriage return inserted that I would
like to delete.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

With your cursor in the Find What? box, go to More > Special and
choose Paragraph Mark (first one in the list). It will insert the code
for a paragraph mark into the Find box. Tab to the Replace box and
type a space, and click Replace All.

(If the document has paragraphs separated by two adjacent paragraph
marks, you'll need first to replace ^p^p with something else that
otherwise doesn't appear in your document, such as ^l. Then after the
unwanted paragraph marks are gone, go back and replace ^l with ^p.)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Why not just replace ^p^p with ^p? But in such situations, if it is desired
to preserve these actual paragraph breaks, then the more prudent approach is
to replace ^p with ^l, ^l^l with ^p, and then ^l with a space.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

With your cursor in the Find What? box, go to More > Special and
choose Paragraph Mark (first one in the list). It will insert the code
for a paragraph mark into the Find box. Tab to the Replace box and
type a space, and click Replace All.

(If the document has paragraphs separated by two adjacent paragraph
marks, you'll need first to replace ^p^p with something else that
otherwise doesn't appear in your document, such as ^l. Then after the
unwanted paragraph marks are gone, go back and replace ^l with ^p.)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Peter's reply gives you the basic answer to your question. If you're trying
to reformat text copied from the Web, it may be that what you are dealing
with is not paragraph breaks but line breaks. In any case, see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/CleanWebText.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Because if you first replace ^p^p with ^p, you'll lose the actual
paragraph division when you remove all the ^p's. But why is it more
prudent to do the intermediate step ^p > ^l > space ?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Because to me it seems easier to convert ^p to ^l and then ^l^l to ^p than
to convert ^p^p to something intermediate and then ^p to something else and
then the something intermediate back to ^p. Not to mention that a lot of the
text pasted from the Web has line breaks to begin with, so what you already
have is ^l^l.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

Because if you first replace ^p^p with ^p, you'll lose the actual
paragraph division when you remove all the ^p's. But why is it more
prudent to do the intermediate step ^p > ^l > space ?