Newbie question about page breaks and reformatting a document

[Matthew C.]

I have a .PDF converted to .DOC that I intend to print on paper. The text is
too small to read, so I increased the font size. This pushes the lines to
the right of the page so they wrap to the next line.

In the past I've manually deleted carriage returns at the end of the lines,
reformatting the document manually. This document is way too big. How can I
reformat the document without removing the carriage returns that I need to
keep?

Below is an example of what I'm trying to describe:

ORIGINAL TEXT IN 12pt. looks like this:
---------------------------------------
The story began like this. One day, at the peak of my work rush, as I was
sweating over a lost shipment intended for the Kitezhgrad Magicotechnical
Plant, my friend Eddie Amperian showed up in my office. Being a polite and
well-brought-up person, he did not materialize unceremoniously right in the
rickety visitor's chair, or barge in obnoxiously through the wall, or hurtle
through the open transom like a catapulted cobblestone. Most of my friends
are always in a hurry, late for something, or behind schedule, and they
always materialize, or barge in, or hurtle through shamelessly whenever they
feel like it, eschewing normal communications. Eddie was not like them: he
modestly entered through the door. He even knocked, but came in before I had
time to answer.


REFORMATTED TEXT IN 14pt. looks like this:
---------------------------------------------------

The story began like this. One day, at the peak of my work rush, as I was
sweating over a lost
shipment intended for the Kitezhgrad Magicotechnical Plant, my friend Eddie
Amperian showed up in my
office. Being a polite and well-brought-up person, he did not materialize
unceremoniously right in the
rickety visitor's chair, or barge in obnoxiously through the wall, or hurtle
through the open transom like a
catapulted cobblestone. Most of my friends are always in a hurry, late for
something, or behind schedule,
and they always materialize, or barge in, or hurtle through shamelessly
whenever they feel like it,
eschewing normal communications. Eddie was not like them: he modestly
entered through the door. He
even knocked, but came in before I had time to answer.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Clean_Up_Text.htm

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

 

[Matthew C.]

Thanks for the help. The document has some more complicated formatting,
specifically First Line Indent and Left Indent. Deleting the ^p from the
second line of the paragraph caused the whole paragraph to be indented.

Because each paragraph typically ends with a period, I replaced ".^p" with
".^p^p" to separate the paragraphs. That made it easier to view. Now, any
carriage return following a letter is replaced by the same letter and a
space. I end up doing find/replace 26 times, but at least it's somewhat
automated.

If I could figure out how to move the Left Indent, it would be done.

 

[Matthew C.]

It took me a few tries, but I figured it out. Something I did made Format >
Paragraph work the way I expected and now I've got a nice clean document.
Usually I stay up late playing games, not working with Windows.

Clean Up Text was very useful. Thanks again!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The trick is not to remove paragraph marks but to convert them to line
breaks, then convert the double line breaks (which you create as needed) to
paragraph marks. Then when you remove the line breaks you should end up with
paragraphs with only a first-line indent (or none). As you've found, Format
| Paragraph will handle any remaining problems (or you could just drag the
indent markers on the ruler), but applying styles with the desired
formatting would be an even better approach.

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