Move portions of multiple lines of text in a unusual way

[duugg]

Sorry if this is already posted, don't know what keywords/function names to
search for. I am using MS Word 2003. I have multiple lines of text and would
like to move portions of it in a unusual way, for example...here's some
data...

apple red
apple red
grape green
grape green
banana yellow
banana yellow

What I would like to do is to find some "non-manual" way to move the all the
colors over by 5 or more spaces so that they all now look like this

apple red
grape green

etc

Can this be done?
Thanks much in advance.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Assuming a tab character has been used between the first and second words,
move the tab stop (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/SettingTabs.htm). If there are multiple
tab characters, remove all but one (use Find and Replace to replace ^t^t
with ^t until it quits) and then set a tab stop where you want the second
column. If the words are separated by spaces, you can replace the spaces
with tabs. You could also convert the entire thing to a table and arrange
the columns as desired.

 

[duugg]

Thanks Susanne but it doesn't seem to help as this data is NOT tab delimited,
I also tried fixed width delimited when exporting to Excel and that is not
working as planned either. This is truly a tough one. Common sense to me
would be to use the drawing arrow (in the drawing toolbar) to highlight the
portion of text (in this case, the colors) that you want to move and simply
move it. I'm surprised that this can't be done.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Without knowing what is separating the two columns, it is impossible to give
you any further suggestions. Display nonprinting characters and tell us
whether they are spaces or what. If you pasted the text from Excel, it will
be in a table (Table | Show Gridlines).

 

[duugg]

Data is posted from an old mainframe system. I think I'm going to have to do
this manually. Thanks anyways.