Thank you all so much for the incredibly informative tutorial! When I searched help, I was unable to find anything about the "pilcrow" or how to get rid of extra paragraph breaks. Thanks again for that! For the record, when I have my info, it shows up as such in Writer: Jane Smith <tab> 123 Main Street <tab> City ST 12345<pilcrow> John Smith <tab> 234 Main Street <tab> City ST 12345<pilcrow> Jane Doe <tab> 345 Main Street <tab> City ST 12345<pilcrow> John Doe <tab> 456 Main Street <tab> City ST 12345<pilcrow>
The question now would be how to get it from the above format into the below when putting it into the Spreadsheet (with each name & address in it's own cell, label ready for USPS): Jane Smith 123 Main Street City ST 12345 John Smith 234 Main Street City ST 12345 Jane Doe 345 Main Street City ST 12345 John Doe 456 Main Street City ST 12345 How would I replace a tab in the Find & Replace menu with a line break? On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 4:38 AM Brian Barker <b.m.bar...@btinternet.com> wrote: > At 15:20 27/10/2020 -0500, Aloris "Hellen" Te wrote: > >I have one question: I am unable to do a find/replace on a line > >break [as when a user hits "enter" and is reflected as the > >"paragraph symbol" when the nonprinting characters (CTRL+F10) is > >active]. In other words, if I have an address list with 30 addresses > >in Writer, but I want to move it over to the spreadsheet in address > >format, I don't want each line to be put in each cell...I want the > >address to show up in the spreadsheet as one complete address per > >cell. But because there is no capability to find/replace the > >paragraph end, I cannot make the lines appear in the same cell, with > >a soft return in the same cell. I appreciate if someone could assist > >me to discover the right method of find/replace. > > First, the effect of pressing Enter and which is represented by a > pilcrow (what you are calling a "paragraph symbol") is a paragraph > break, not a line break. Line breaks are created in text documents by > pressing Shift+Enter and are shown by a bent left-pointing arrow. > > There is a workaround you can use once you have pasted the material > into a spreadsheet: > o Select all the cells corresponding to one address - using click and > Shift+click. > o Go to Format | Merge Cells (or click the Merge Cells button in the > Formatting toolbar). > o Click Yes to acknowledge the merging of cell data. (Merge helpfully > adds a space between each original cell content.) > o Now you have a cell occupying more than one row. Simply use Merge > Cells again immediately to separate the rows and move the contents to > the first row. > o Select the unwanted blank cells and use Edit| Delete Cells... (or > right-click | Delete...) to delete them. > o Repeat for other addresses. > > This may seem a heavy workload, but it is worth saying that you may > have to do some work on your data anyway. If your addresses follow on > in your text document, there is no way that OpenOffice can guess > where one finishes and the next starts. If you have indicated the > breaks between addresses in some way (an empty paragraph?), you have > not let on about how this is. > > o If necessary, press Enter where required in the text file to add an > empty paragraph between each address. > o Go to Tools | AutoCorrect Options... | Options. > o Ensure "Combine single line paragraphs if length is greater than > ...%" is ticked. > o With this option still selected, click Edit... and modify "Minimum > size" to some suitable small value - perhaps even 0%. > o Go to Format | AutoCorrect > | Apply. (Note that it appears that > each address line needs not to end with a full stop for this to > work.) Each address becomes one paragraph; again, intervening spaces > are automatically added. > o Use Find & Replace with "^$" (no quotes) in the "Search for" box > and nothing in the "Replace with" box (and More Options | Regular > expressions ticked) to remove the empty paragraphs. > o Copy and paste into the spreadsheet. > > I'm guessing that by "soft return" you mean that you want the > original address lines to remain as separate lines within the > spreadsheet cell containing that address. You can insert such line > breaks using Ctrl+Enter in the spreadsheet cell. I don't know of any > way to carry these over automatically from a text document. > > I trust this helps. > > Brian Barker > >
