pasting text: line breaks v para marks?

[Steve Hawkins]

If I paste text from e-mails, web sites etc. into Word for reformatting, the
formatted text options leave line breaks at the end of each line, and if one
is lucky, a para mark at the end of each para. One can automatically delete
the line break 'wrappers' via the replace special characters in 'find and
replace', and the document then fills the proper width of the Word page.

But if one pastes as 'unformatted' text (if you want to get rid of other
HTML etc elements for eg), Word actually seems to go right over the top with
formatting and replaces all the line break ('shift' 'enter's), with para
marks ('returns' or 'enters'), making any reformatting a pain.

WHY!?

How can one paste text without wrapping marks, other than paras in the
proper places?

(Incidentally, I suspect that a lot of habitual 'typewriterists' are unaware
of the difference between 'return' and 'enter' and some sort of a publicity
drive for 'shift; enter' might help.)

Regards,
Steve_H

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/CleanWebText.htm and/or
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Clean_Up_Text.htm

 

[Beth Melton]

I'm not entirely sure of what you are encountering but I suspect you
are having difficulty keeping the true paragraphs intact since a
paragraph mark is also used at the end of a line that should be
wrapped?

If that's the case then usually there are two paragraph marks for
paragraphs and only one paragraph mark at the end of the end of the
line. What I do is find two occurrences of paragraph marks: ^p^p and
replace them with something like @@@@. Then I find the single
paragraph marks (end of line) and replace them with a space. Then
replace @@@@ with a paragraph mark and clean up any double spaces with
single spaces.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Or you can replace ^p with ^l, ^l^l with ^p, and ^l with a space. Sometimes
just running AutoFormat will deal with a situation where the line ends are
actually paragraph marks.

 

[Steve Hawkins]

Ah, thanks to you both for that. I had got half way there, but had not
thought of this clever way to differentiate the paras from the lines. Award
yourselves a star!

Cheers,

Steve

 

[Beth Melton]

Glad to hear this approached worked for you. I've used the similar
methods for other find/replace situations too. Sometimes you gotta
'think outside the lines'. <grin>

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Are you positive you're choosing Manual Line Break and not Manual Page
Break, which immediately follows it in the list? There is (to my knowledge)
no such thing as a "mechanical line break."

 

[Steve Hawkins]

Well, I would have said 'positive', but now I look again and find Manual
Line Break does now produce ^l after all. Having gone over this a number of
times at the time I am puzzled as to how I can have missed such an obvious
mistake, but it appears I owe you an apology: sorry folks.

Anything to add about that 'backwards P with the degree sign in front of
it' - what is it called?

Regards,
Steve_H

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, a "backwards P" would be a paragraph break (¶), which can be searched
for using ^p. The degree sign is used to indicate a nonbreaking space (^s).
The degree sign is also used (with some space before it) for em and en
spaces. See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm for the
whole catalog.

 

[Steve Hawkins]

Excellent Sue!

Thanks very much.

Steve_H

Well, a "backwards P" would be a paragraph break (¶), which can be
searched
for using ^p. The degree sign is used to indicate a nonbreaking space
(^s).
The degree sign is also used (with some space before it) for em and en
spaces. See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm for the
whole catalog.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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