[Solved] (for now): Finding tabs and paragraph ends

[bfdc]

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

[acknak]

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.

[keme]

...
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.

Exactly. You can do it anyway...

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.

Remove all empty paragraphs.

• 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.

If the spacing is not right, adjust space before or after the "Body text" style.

• 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.

[bfdc]

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.)
<><>

[robleyd]

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.

[keme]

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

[bfdc]

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.