[Solved] Unable to highlight/delete text copied from the net

[colin reeves]

How do I enter a query? Text copied from internet into Open Office Writer retains & repeats a line across the column. It wont highlight or copy and I cant delete it. Help!

[RoryOF]

/Format /Paragraph : Borders tab and deselect the bottom border.

When copying from the Internet it is best to use /Edit /Paste Special and select Unformatted text from the popup.

[colin reeves]

Thanks, Rory - I do this but don't know where I caught this untouchable line!

[RoryOF]

OpenOffice has an AutoCorrect (/Format /Autocorrect/Autocorrect options : Options tab, "Apply Border" in the [T] column, as far as I remember) feature where three punctuation chars, such as ***, --- etc, often used by authors to mark a scene change in a work, give different weights of cross document line. One can turn this off, or (as I do), immediately it occurs (if unwanted) press Ctrl Z or /Edit /Undo, and the three chars are restored.

[colin reeves]

Sorry, tried your ideas, but the lines remain untouchable. If I add new text and paras, new lines appear! (they ignore delete and highlighting efforts)

[colin reeves]

I will probably have to copy and paste as unformatted text into a fresh file, then reformat all the items

[RoryOF]

If the lines are fine lines, then they are probably section or frame boundaries from the pasted text. Paste special unformatted will remove them on new insertions, but you will have to reformat. On existing occurrences, select the text, Cut it, then /Edit /Paste Special : unformatted, and reformat as you require.

[Bill]

Copying from a Web page and posting in Writer will often insert sections in the pasted text. In that case, section lines are displayed to show the boundaries of the sections. Try copying a couple of posts from the forum and paste them into Writer. You should see several section lines in the pasted text. Section lines don't need to be removed because they're only formatting aids that don't appear when the document is printed.

[colin reeves]

Rory & Bill replies most helpful - church magazine now looking good. Thanks Colin (end)

[zero.one]

I had the same problem but was able to highlight only the text I needed to delete. This solution should also work if you use Edit/Select all to highlight the entire text.

Through experimentation, I found that my problem occurred because some sections (whatever they are) had write protection enabled. Here's what I did to fix that:

1) Safety first: Save your document as-is so you have a restore point.

2) Highlight the text you need to delete. If you can't do that, use "Edit/Select all" to highlight the entire
document.

3) Use "Format/sections" to get a (hopefully small) list of sections. (I had 9.)

4) For each and every section:
If the "Write protection/Protection" box is selected, de-select it.
The "Editable in read/only" property is probably doesn't need to be set. Even so, I just now (while writing this sentence) turned it on for all sections in my problem document and haven't seen any ill effects.

The "Link/Link" and "Hide/Hide" boxes weren't selected for any section in my copied data. If the "Hide/Hide box" was selected I would've de-selected it. I wouldn't change the "Link/Link" box.

"every section" means "every section." I found the "Write protection/Protection" box selected in multiple sections, so don't quit early.

5) Voila. That's it. Now you can use highlighting to select and delete what you don't want. (I remember using backspace to eliminate some parts. Maybe that alternative was actually needed, maybe not.)

It should take you less than a couple of minutes to try out this solution. Why not give it a go?

It took me more than a couple of hours to create a forum account and describe this process. Even if it doesn't work for you, you won't have wasted nearly as much time trying this solution as I did describing it. If all goes well, though, neither one of us will have wasted time. (Not only that, you won't need to paste network data in text mode any more.)