Rewrapping text with Word

R

R. Gerard

I am running OS 10.4.2 and Word 11.1.0

I will frequently get text like this in an email in Entourage...


------ Forwarded Message
Hurricane Katrina - Our Experiences
By Parmedics Larry Bradsahw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky
EMSNetwork News
Tuesday 06 September 2005
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's
store
at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy
display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours
without
electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were
beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had
locked up the
food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside
Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and
hungry.
The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and
------

...and reading it drives me nuts and I'd like to reformat it without
all the one-word lines before copying it back to an email and forwarding
it to friends and family.

I have combed through Word but can't figure out how to do so.

Would some kind soul please share the secret with me?

Many, many thanks

Bob
 
M

Michel Bintener

There are a couple of ways of doing this. First of all, let's tackle the
problem at the beginning, i.e. in Entourage. When you get messages like this
and you view them in the preview pane, try and use the "Rewrap Paragraphs"
button. It's one of the two buttons which you can see in the info pane
(which contains the "From", "To" and "Subject" headers").

When you forward text and it gets messed up, select the text in question,
ctrl-/right-click it and select Auto Text Cleanup>Rewrap Paragraphs from the
contextual menu. Alternatively, use the Rewrap Paragraph button, which you
can find in the toolbar at the top of every Entourage message window. I
actually wanted to demonstrate this by using your text, but Entourage didn't
really do a good job at it, so let's move on to Word, where you can see why
this doesn't work all the time.

Copy your text into Word, and turn on the invisible formatting marks
(Cmd+8). As you can see, your text contains many double spaces where there
should be single ones, and there are plenty of hard returns all over the
place. In some cases, using Format>AutoFormat will give you a decent result;
in this case, however, it doesn't, so you'll have to manually clean it,
preferably by doing a find/replace, for instance have Word find double
spaces and replace them by single spaces, and so on.

As I said, in many cases, it's fairly easy, using one of the first methods
mentioned above; your text however has been messed up quite a bit, probably
because it has been forwarded many times.
 
R

R. Gerard

Usenet drives me nuts!!!

I posted the question below this a.m.

I came back here a few hours later and there was an answer.

I return a few hours later to thank the person who posted the
answer...and the answer is no longer here.

Go figure.

In any event, should that person return to my post, many thanks for
taking the time to write your answer. I tried both methods and I'll
save your instructions for future use.

Again, my thanks,
Bob
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

There are a couple of ways of doing this. First of all, let's tackle the
problem at the beginning, i.e. in Entourage. When you get messages like this
and you view them in the preview pane, try and use the "Rewrap Paragraphs"
button. It's one of the two buttons which you can see in the info pane
(which contains the "From", "To" and "Subject" headers").
Click to expand...

That won't completely solve the problem, for Word. The "Rewrap Paragraphs"
button (or menu item) wraps as for plain text email messages (even if you're
in HTML), namely at 76 characters (plus up to 3 reply quotes). It doesn't do
soft-wrapping like Word or HTML: it does hard wrapping. So when you paste
that into Word, it won't be so staggered, but every line will be a separate
paragraph, and much too short. But it's the first step, yes.
When you forward text and it gets messed up, select the text in question,
ctrl-/right-click it and select Auto Text Cleanup>Rewrap Paragraphs from the
contextual menu. Alternatively, use the Rewrap Paragraph button, which you
can find in the toolbar at the top of every Entourage message window. I
actually wanted to demonstrate this by using your text, but Entourage didn't
really do a good job at it, so let's move on to Word, where you can see why
this doesn't work all the time.

Copy your text into Word, and turn on the invisible formatting marks
(Cmd+8). As you can see, your text contains many double spaces where there
should be single ones, and there are plenty of hard returns all over the
place. In some cases, using Format>AutoFormat will give you a decent result;
in this case, however, it doesn't, so you'll have to manually clean it,
preferably by doing a find/replace, for instance have Word find double
spaces and replace them by single spaces, and so on.
Click to expand...

R might need an example to understand what you mean. First you have to guard
against removing the double-returns at the end of (Entourage) paragraphs. Go
to Edit/Replace, and enter

^p^p

in the Find box, and something unusual as a place holder, such as

#####

in the Replace box, and click Replace All. (How would anyone know this
unless someone told them - or they dug deep in the Help?) Then go back to
the Find/Replace dialog again, enter

^p

in the Find box, type a space in the Replace box, and click Replace All.
Then go back to the Find/Replace dialog again, enter

#####

in the Find box, enter

^p^p

or

^p

depending on whether you want double or single spaces between paragraphs
(you should really have Space After of 6 pts in your Normal style, and then
you only need ^p single return between paragraphs).

in the Replace box,
As I said, in many cases, it's fairly easy, using one of the first methods
mentioned above; your text however has been messed up quite a bit, probably
because it has been forwarded many times.
Click to expand...

Using "Rewrap paragraphs" will fix that in one step, no matter how many
times the text has been butchered. You only have to do it once.

--
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.
 
M

matt neuburg

R. Gerard said:
I am running OS 10.4.2 and Word 11.1.0

I will frequently get text like this in an email in Entourage...


------ Forwarded Message
Hurricane Katrina - Our Experiences
By Parmedics Larry Bradsahw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky
EMSNetwork News
Tuesday 06 September 2005
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's
store
at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy
display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours
without
electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were
beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had
locked up the
food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside
Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and
hungry.
The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and
------

...and reading it drives me nuts and I'd like to reformat it without
all the one-word lines before copying it back to an email and forwarding
it to friends and family.

I have combed through Word but can't figure out how to do so.
Click to expand...

(1) I don't understand what Word is doing in this story. Why isn't this
an Entourage problem?

(2) If you must use Word, I do happen to have a macro that does what you
describe. It's very old but it does still work:

Public Sub emailToParas()
WordBasic.EditReplace Find:=" ^p", replace:="^p", Direction:=0,
MatchCase:=0, WholeWord:=0, PatternMatch:=0, SoundsLike:=0,
ReplaceAll:=1, Format:=0, Wrap:=0
WordBasic.EditReplace Find:="\n([!\n])", replace:=" \1", Direction:=0,
MatchCase:=0, WholeWord:=0, PatternMatch:=1, SoundsLike:=0,
ReplaceAll:=1, Format:=0, Wrap:=0
WordBasic.EditReplace Find:="^p ", replace:="^p", Direction:=0,
MatchCase:=0, WholeWord:=0, PatternMatch:=0, SoundsLike:=0,
ReplaceAll:=1, Format:=0, Wrap:=0
End Sub

(3) However, I think it would be better to solve the problem directly
within Entourage. Why not just use the native Rewrap Paragraphs? Also,
Entourage does Services, and there are several good text services that
can do what you describe. WordServices from devon-technologies, for
example. m.
 
R

R. Gerard

Gentlemen -

Thank you very much for going to all the time and trouble to provide
a solution to my problem.

Greatly appreciated,
Bob
 
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