Auto wrapping text at 65 characters in Word 98 for Mac?

[belkin]

Hi,
Sorry to dumb down the level of discourse on the list, but I'm
struggling to find a Mac-based alternative to Textpad shareware, or
alternatively, to figure out a way to get MS Word to automatically wrap
text at 65 characters.

I want to send out articles to ezine distributors and they want them
totally unformatted and auto wrapped at 65 charactes.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

Cheers!
belkin

 

[matt neuburg]

Hi,
Sorry to dumb down the level of discourse on the list, but I'm
struggling to find a Mac-based alternative to Textpad shareware, or
alternatively, to figure out a way to get MS Word to automatically wrap
text at 65 characters.

I want to send out articles to ezine distributors and they want them
totally unformatted and auto wrapped at 65 charactes.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

TextWrangler. Free and will do exactly what you're after here. m.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Sorry to dumb down the level of discourse on the list, but I'm
struggling to find a Mac-based alternative to Textpad shareware, or
alternatively, to figure out a way to get MS Word to automatically wrap
text at 65 characters.

I want to send out articles to ezine distributors and they want them
totally unformatted and auto wrapped at 65 charactes.

There may be a way to do this in Word, but probably only by a complex macro.
I'm sure someone will be along in a moment. But Word is primarily designed
as a word processor where paragraphs soft-wrap to fixed-width margins. This
sort of thing is much easier to do in a plain-text text editor.

For example, you could get Text Wrangler 2.0, which is now FREE, from
BareBones. (Just do a search on "Text Wrangler" at versiontracker.com .)

In its Preferences, go to Editor Defaults, and choose to Soft Wrap at 65
characters. This is optional, but it will give you the look you'll end up
with. Or _don't_ do it, as a reminder that you need to hard-wrap before
saving! (See next paragraph.) It doesn't really matter what you use as
default font since it's going to be saved as plain text with no font
specifications, but it's best if you leave it at a monospaced font like the
default Monaco just to see it as it will appear to your editors. Also, ask
your editors if they prefer Macintosh, Unix or DOS (i.e. Windows)
line-endings and set that too in Text:Saving preferences. (Believe it or
not, Word uses Macintosh-type line endings, even in Word Windows, for
paragraph endings. But your editors may prefer a different one for text
files.)

***Essential: after you finish the document (and every time you re-open it
to edit it, do this again after editing) go the the Text menu and select
Hard Wrap. Set the Character Width to 65 once, and that will be the default
ever after. (You don't really have to soft wrap initially as long as you
Hard Wrap before saving - that's all that really matters.) You must remember
to do this before saving. There's a handy keyboard shortcut: cmd-\.

When you save, you'll probably want to add a ".txt" extension - ask your
editors. It saves as plain text type anyway, but I can't find a preference
or checkbox for adding the extension - very peculiar. I suspect there's some
default somewhere I'm not seeing, but it's not that important.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Guest]

There may be a way to do this in Word, but probably only by a complex macro.
I'm sure someone will be along in a moment. But Word is primarily designed
as a word processor where paragraphs soft-wrap to fixed-width margins. This
sort of thing is much easier to do in a plain-text text editor.

I agree with the other posters that something like BBEdit would be most
suitable. However, this can be done easily enough in Word as long as you
are willing to limit yourself to a single font. Suppose you decide to
use 12 pt Courier in documents of this type. Now all you need to know is
that a line 6.56 inches long will permit 65 12 pt Courier characters on
the line. So set up a style that does what you want (font, paragraph
settings), or make a template document with this as the Normal style,
and just use that template or style whenever you want to make a document
with this limited formatting!

George

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Ummm, lessee.... I remember it is simple... But can I remember how....??

Ah hah! Yes!!

1) In Word go into Normal View

2) In Word>Preferences>Edit set Wrap to Window to ON

3) In your document, drag the Word window to be 65 characters wide

4) In File>Save As choose "Text Only with Line Breaks".

5) Save.

You will save a text-only file completely unformatted with a carriage return
at the end of each line which will be the width of the Word window when you
saved.

Hope this helps.

There may be a way to do this in Word, but probably only by a complex macro.
I'm sure someone will be along in a moment. But Word is primarily designed
as a word processor where paragraphs soft-wrap to fixed-width margins. This
sort of thing is much easier to do in a plain-text text editor.

For example, you could get Text Wrangler 2.0, which is now FREE, from
BareBones. (Just do a search on "Text Wrangler" at versiontracker.com .)

In its Preferences, go to Editor Defaults, and choose to Soft Wrap at 65
characters. This is optional, but it will give you the look you'll end up
with. Or _don't_ do it, as a reminder that you need to hard-wrap before
saving! (See next paragraph.) It doesn't really matter what you use as
default font since it's going to be saved as plain text with no font
specifications, but it's best if you leave it at a monospaced font like the
default Monaco just to see it as it will appear to your editors. Also, ask
your editors if they prefer Macintosh, Unix or DOS (i.e. Windows)
line-endings and set that too in Text:Saving preferences. (Believe it or
not, Word uses Macintosh-type line endings, even in Word Windows, for
paragraph endings. But your editors may prefer a different one for text
files.)

***Essential: after you finish the document (and every time you re-open it
to edit it, do this again after editing) go the the Text menu and select
Hard Wrap. Set the Character Width to 65 once, and that will be the default
ever after. (You don't really have to soft wrap initially as long as you
Hard Wrap before saving - that's all that really matters.) You must remember
to do this before saving. There's a handy keyboard shortcut: cmd-\.

When you save, you'll probably want to add a ".txt" extension - ask your
editors. It saves as plain text type anyway, but I can't find a preference
or checkbox for adding the extension - very peculiar. I suspect there's some
default somewhere I'm not seeing, but it's not that important.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Sounds good, but:

2. That preference is in Word>Preferences>View, not >Edit.

3. How do you drag the Word window to be 65 characters wide? No such
setting. Presumably you first need to choose a monospace font like Monaca or
Courier, since fonts like TNR all have different widths per character. Then
you have to sit there counting characters until you reach 65, I guess? Or is
there a better way, like in TextWrangler (which does this much more easily)?

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

From: "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.mac.office.word
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 20:38:52 +1000
Conversation: Auto wrapping text at 65 characters in Word 98 for Mac?
Subject: Re: Auto wrapping text at 65 characters in Word 98 for Mac?

Ummm, lessee.... I remember it is simple... But can I remember how....??

Ah hah! Yes!!

1) In Word go into Normal View

2) In Word>Preferences>Edit set Wrap to Window to ON

3) In your document, drag the Word window to be 65 characters wide

4) In File>Save As choose "Text Only with Line Breaks".

5) Save.

You will save a text-only file completely unformatted with a carriage return
at the end of each line which will be the width of the Word window when you
saved.

Hope this helps.

There may be a way to do this in Word, but probably only by a complex macro.
I'm sure someone will be along in a moment. But Word is primarily designed
as a word processor where paragraphs soft-wrap to fixed-width margins. This
sort of thing is much easier to do in a plain-text text editor.

For example, you could get Text Wrangler 2.0, which is now FREE, from
BareBones. (Just do a search on "Text Wrangler" at versiontracker.com .)

In its Preferences, go to Editor Defaults, and choose to Soft Wrap at 65
characters. This is optional, but it will give you the look you'll end up
with. Or _don't_ do it, as a reminder that you need to hard-wrap before
saving! (See next paragraph.) It doesn't really matter what you use as
default font since it's going to be saved as plain text with no font
specifications, but it's best if you leave it at a monospaced font like the
default Monaco just to see it as it will appear to your editors. Also, ask
your editors if they prefer Macintosh, Unix or DOS (i.e. Windows)
line-endings and set that too in Text:Saving preferences. (Believe it or
not, Word uses Macintosh-type line endings, even in Word Windows, for
paragraph endings. But your editors may prefer a different one for text
files.)

***Essential: after you finish the document (and every time you re-open it
to edit it, do this again after editing) go the the Text menu and select
Hard Wrap. Set the Character Width to 65 once, and that will be the default
ever after. (You don't really have to soft wrap initially as long as you
Hard Wrap before saving - that's all that really matters.) You must remember
to do this before saving. There's a handy keyboard shortcut: cmd-\.

When you save, you'll probably want to add a ".txt" extension - ask your
editors. It saves as plain text type anyway, but I can't find a preference
or checkbox for adding the extension - very peculiar. I suspect there's some
default somewhere I'm not seeing, but it's not that important.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[belkin]

Thank you all for the text wrapping help. I'm going to try out Text
Wrangler, and a friend is trying to find me an old version off BBEdit.

I appreciate you all taking the time to help me out.

cheers!
Bruce

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Duh! And I "Checked" it too, before posting You're right, it is in
Preferences>View, and I forgot to mention, it doesn't appear at all unless
you ARE in Normal View.

As to your second question:

012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345

Cheers

Sounds good, but:

2. That preference is in Word>Preferences>View, not >Edit.

3. How do you drag the Word window to be 65 characters wide? No such
setting. Presumably you first need to choose a monospace font like Monaca or
Courier, since fonts like TNR all have different widths per character. Then
you have to sit there counting characters until you reach 65, I guess? Or is
there a better way, like in TextWrangler (which does this much more easily)?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Hmmm. OK. (Only that's 66, you've got to lop off one.) Still quite "manual",
mind you.

We can assume that Word will do backtracking to wrap properly at the end of
the previous word, and so on can we? I guess if you're really addicted to
Word and can work nowhere else, this should now work OK. Quite a few
contortions to get big sophisticated Word to behave like a text editor. I
still think you're better off in a made-for-this test editor myself. I mean
what if you accidentally drag the Word window a little wider by mistake?
Oops.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.



From: "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.mac.office.word
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 16:15:28 +1000
Conversation: Auto wrapping text at 65 characters in Word 98 for Mac?
Subject: Re: Auto wrapping text at 65 characters in Word 98 for Mac?

Duh! And I "Checked" it too, before posting You're right, it is in
Preferences>View, and I forgot to mention, it doesn't appear at all unless
you ARE in Normal View.

As to your second question:

012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345

Cheers

Sounds good, but:

2. That preference is in Word>Preferences>View, not >Edit.

3. How do you drag the Word window to be 65 characters wide? No such
setting. Presumably you first need to choose a monospace font like Monaca or
Courier, since fonts like TNR all have different widths per character. Then
you have to sit there counting characters until you reach 65, I guess? Or is
there a better way, like in TextWrangler (which does this much more easily)?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410