Using find and replace or wildcards to eliminate headers and such

[Joe]

I like to cut discussions off Usnet and message boards and paste them
in Word docs for later reading. The problem is that there are certain
headers with information I'd rather not include that always show up in
a cut and paste, for example:


More options Apr 24, 8:20 am
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
From: t*** <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 06:20:01 -0700
Local: Tues, Apr 24 2007 8:20 am
Subject: Making Windows Mail default for Word documents instead of
Outlook
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Is there a way I can eliminate all of this superfluous info using Word
to just be left with the message text?

 

[Guest]

Joe:

Warning -- I'm not going to be very helpful here.

Yes, you can certainly use Find and Replace, and especially the "Use
wildcards" option to eliminate large chunks of unwanted material, provided
you can identify where the chunks start and stop.

But that's liable to vary a lot between different newsgroups. So most of the
work is going to be up to you.

I can only suggest that you teach yourself about Find and Replace, and about
wildcard searches, then experiment to develop what you need. Also, learn to
record macros and save the various searches you create. That way, you can run
a series of different find and replace operations if needed to completely
clean up a collection.

See: http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/UsingWildcards.htm

Bear

 

[Joe]

Joe:

Warning -- I'm not going to be very helpful here.

Yes, you can certainly use Find and Replace, and especially the "Use
wildcards" option to eliminate large chunks of unwanted material, provided
you can identify where the chunks start and stop.

But that's liable to vary a lot between different newsgroups. So most of the
work is going to be up to you.

I can only suggest that you teach yourself about Find and Replace, and about
wildcard searches, then experiment to develop what you need. Also, learn to
record macros and save the various searches you create. That way, you can run
a series of different find and replace operations if needed to completely
clean up a collection.

See:http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/UsingWildcards.htm

Bear

I was hoping there was a way to use a wildcard to eliminate a certain
number of paragraph returns since the only consistent thing about
these headers are the amount of lines. I don't need to remove all the
lines but a large chunk would help. Is there a wildcard formula that
would just erase a bunch of lines after for instances the word
"newsgroups:"?

 

[Guest]

Joe:

I was trying to gently encourage you to figure it out for yourself. It's not
terribly difficult, and Find and Replace (especially with wildcards) is so
useful, you really ought to build your skills with them.

The online help is okay, and you can get lots of great advice on the Word
MVP FAQs site:

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/UsingWildcards.htm

Failing that, if you ckeck the Use Wildcards check box, the following Find
What argument finds all the characters between the triple chevrons in the
sample text you sent.

\>\>\>*\>\>\>

The "*" means any number of any characters. You have to escape the ">"
character when using it in a wildcard search, so each one has to have the
backslash before it.

You would replace this with NULL, that is, you leave the Replace With box
empty.

Similarly, you can't use ^p in a wildcard search, so to find paragraphs, you
need to enter the character number as ^13. To get all of the sample you sent,
you'd use a Find What argument like:

Newsgroups:*^13*^13*^13*^13*^13*^13*^13*^13*^13*^13*^13

With one repetition of *^13 for each group of text ending in a paragraph mark.

Bear