I need to double space between paragraphs of a document that contains parts that are already double-spaced and parts that aren't.
Want to find the paragraph end (\n, right?) and replace it with two returns, or whatever they're called.
OO doesn't find paragraph ends, though they're clearly there, visible with nonprinting characters on.
Regular expressions checked.
OO can find tabs, at least right-pointing ones. And I can replace anything with paragraph returns, and they show up as the backward cap P.
Can us $ for end graph to add the extra return, but...
...After adding all the extra lines, I need to find the triple-spaced spots and replace them with double-spaced.
I feel like I found the \n once, but no longer, and I am not sure what I might have done (very little) to change settings.
If any help on this, great, if not, I'm just going to live with it, I guess because I'm tired of
Thanks,
Bob
[Solved] (for now): Finding tabs and paragraph ends
[Solved] (for now): Finding tabs and paragraph ends
Last edited by bfdc on Tue Dec 05, 2017 2:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Think the best of yourself, and those around you. Drink plenty of water.
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Re: Finding tabs and paragraph ends
Greetings and welcome to the community forum!
There are some serious restrictions on what you can do with paragraph breaks (shown as ¶) in Find & Replace.
You can find/replace/add/remove paragraph breaks by
Search for: $
Replace with: \n
That won't actually change anything (replace a break with a break). You can use two (or more) \n in the replace field to add extra breaks.
And you can find/replace an empty paragraph with
Search for: ^$
Replace with: (whatever)
But Writer cannot search across a paragraph break. So you can't search for two breaks in a row.
The best way to manage space between paragraphs is to use the paragraph format: Format > Paragraph > Indents & Spacing > Spacing > Above/Below paragraph, but you may not want to re-work all the spacing to do that.
There are some serious restrictions on what you can do with paragraph breaks (shown as ¶) in Find & Replace.
You can find/replace/add/remove paragraph breaks by
Search for: $
Replace with: \n
That won't actually change anything (replace a break with a break). You can use two (or more) \n in the replace field to add extra breaks.
And you can find/replace an empty paragraph with
Search for: ^$
Replace with: (whatever)
But Writer cannot search across a paragraph break. So you can't search for two breaks in a row.
The best way to manage space between paragraphs is to use the paragraph format: Format > Paragraph > Indents & Spacing > Spacing > Above/Below paragraph, but you may not want to re-work all the spacing to do that.
AOO4/LO5 • Linux • Fedora 23
Re: Finding tabs and paragraph ends
Exactly. You can do it anyway...acknak wrote:...
The best way to manage space between paragraphs is to use the paragraph format: Format > Paragraph > Indents & Spacing > Spacing > Above/Below paragraph, but you may not want to re-work all the spacing to do that.
Step by step:
Save a backup before making major changes...
Change all paragraphs with default style to use "Body text" instead.
- Menu item Edit - Find and replace
Click the More options button
Tick the option to search for styles.
Select to search for the default style (named "Default" or "Standard", or something similar depending on language settings)
Replace with "Body text".
Click button Replace all.
- Still using Edit - Find and replace - More options
Untick styles option
Tick Regular expressions
Search for ^$ (two characters, caret + dollar sign)
Leave the "replace" field empty
Click button Replace all.
- Menu item Format - Styles and formatting
Right click Text Body and edit
Select the Indents and spacing tab.
Set suitable spacing before or after paragraph. 4-5mm is a good starting point for normal size text.
Re: Finding tabs and paragraph ends
Thanks, greatly, fellows. I appreciate the info. These all look and sound like good ideas. At least till somebody decides to make it possible to find paragraph ends, add a line return, find three returns, make them into two returns. (It's the actual returns or line returns or spaces between the lines--whichever you want to call them--that are the necessity as I take them out of the word processor and return them to the text file where they must live.)
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Think the best of yourself, and those around you. Drink plenty of water.
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Re: Solved (for now): Finding tabs and paragraph ends
If these are simple text files, you might find that a text editor will do a better job of find/replace in this particular case; I'm not sure what text editors come with/are available for Mac. However, a quick net search suggests there are many.
Cheers
David
OS - Slackware 15 64 bit
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15
LibreOffice 24.2.2.2; SlackBuild for 24.2.2 by Eric Hameleers
David
OS - Slackware 15 64 bit
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15
LibreOffice 24.2.2.2; SlackBuild for 24.2.2 by Eric Hameleers
Re: Solved (for now): Finding tabs and paragraph ends
Notepad++ supports regular expressions search/replace, also with matching across newline. Beyond the scope of this forum, but anyway, here goes...
- Download and install Notepad++
- Open your file
- Menu item Search - Replace
- Enable rule-based search
- Search for (\s*\n)+
- Replace with \n\n
Re: Solved (for now): Finding tabs and paragraph ends
Gadzooks! TextEdit, the existing Mac text editing program, allows finding paragraphs and tabs. No macro capability, I think, but as long as all the other repetitive stuff can be handled in AOO, I can do this one thing or two in TextEdit and be pretty darned happy. Thanks for pointing out the Notepad++ capability, which got me thinking about the TextEdit ability, which I had known about, I think, but it had slipped my mind, obviously, till I looked for it. Life is good.
Think the best of yourself, and those around you. Drink plenty of water.
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