Clean Up Text in Word XP

Jun 1, 2006 11:28 AM

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This is a common problem, and it does not have a built-in solution. To start, ensure that a blank line always appears between actual paragraphs. Then press Ctrl-H and clean up the document using Find and Replace as follows:

1. Replace ^l with ^p.
2. Replace ^p_ with ^p (where the underscore represents a space).
3. Replace _^p with ^p (again the underscore represents a space).
4. Replace ^p^p with %$#@.
5. Replace ^p with a space.
6. Replace %$#@ with ^p^p.

In the Find and Replace dialog, ^l represents a new line and ^p represents an actual paragraph mark, corresponding to
and in HTML. The first step replaces any new-line characters with proper paragraph marks. The blank lines separating the document's true paragraphs will appear as a pair of paragraph marks.

Steps 2 and 3 ensure that the paired paragraph marks aren't missed because of an intervening space. In step 4, we replace the paired paragraph marks with a text string that does not otherwise appear in the document. Step 5 corrects the formatting by replacing each remaining lone paragraph mark with a space, and step 6 restores the correct paragraph marks.

If this process works well for you, you'll want to record it as a macro so you can apply it at will. I use such a macro myself for cleaning up the e-mailed questions in User to User

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