There seem to be a lot of unexpected and unfortunate behaviors in this feature.įirst of all, it should be possible to select a whole paragraph *except* for the last carriage return and use Replace All to eliminate all the other carriage returns. Use Replace All only when you're absolutely positive you'll get the results you want. The first instance (from where the cursor was) of the thing you're looking for will be highlighted.Īnd so on. This illustration shows you're looking for a carriage return (any carriage return), and you're going to replace it with nothing.Ĭlick Find. For instance, if you really are looking for the symbol $ but you want to replace it with a carriage return \n, then you need to actually search for \$ in the Search field and replace it with \n because $ is a special character. If you're using a mix of regular expressions and normal characters, you might need to use a \ in front of anything you want evaluated normally. This will make the program look for what those codes represent, rather than literally those characters. Once your Find and Replace fields contain what they should, click the More Options button. Just use \t normally, in both the Search and the Replace fields, for a tab.As you see, a \n in the Replace field turns into a normal hard return. One thing-you can't replace something with soft returns.If you want to replace one carriage return with two, put \n\n in the Replace field.If you want to replace something with a carriage return, put \n in the Replace field.In the Replace field, you typically don't enter anything since you're probably just trying to get rid of whatever you're searching for. a carriage return but with no text on that line, is ^$ Soft returns inserted with a Shift Return, are \n.Here's a quick reference to the symbols to enter for what you're looking for. In the Find and Replace window, enter the symbol for what you want to search for, in the Find field. In your document, choose Edit > Find and Replace or press Ctrl F. Note: If you're a macro kind of person, see this page on the ooo forum. Or you're turning a spreadsheet or database into text or vice versa.Īt any rate, it would be nice to use the Find and Replace window to quickly find'em and change them to whatever you want: nothing at all, or the phrase "el elegante" or whatever. Maybe you've brought in some ASCII text that had a line break or two after every paragraph and now with formatted text you don't need it. See also this blog on bringing text files into spreadsheets.Ĭall them carriage returns, line breaks, paragraph marks, whatever, sometimes you want fewer of them. John V and Gabor at the Forum helped me find this solution. This is a repost, but it bears repeating since it's powerful, helpful, and not obvious.
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