Technical forums » Office applications »
Removing repeated paragraph breaks after pasting from PDF
Thread poster: adrienneiii
adrienneiii
adrienneiii
United States
Local time: 10:44
Spanish to English
+ ...
Aug 1, 2012

Hello there, can anyone tell me how to do this? After pasting from the particular document I'm working on now, it's worse than usual - ie. a paragraph break after every word, rather than every line as seen in the PDF document. Yet when I try my trusted method of Find>^p, Replace with a space, it doesn't find those paragraph breaks. The same is the case in Windows notepad and OpenOffice Writer, so that would indicate that these are possibly not normal paragraph breaks, though they do look like th... See more
Hello there, can anyone tell me how to do this? After pasting from the particular document I'm working on now, it's worse than usual - ie. a paragraph break after every word, rather than every line as seen in the PDF document. Yet when I try my trusted method of Find>^p, Replace with a space, it doesn't find those paragraph breaks. The same is the case in Windows notepad and OpenOffice Writer, so that would indicate that these are possibly not normal paragraph breaks, though they do look like them....

Any ideas, to save me a lot of work?

Thanks so much. ▲ Collapse
 
Tony M
Tony M
France
Local time: 19:44
Member
French to English
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Some ideas Aug 2, 2012

You say that they "look like" ordinary paragraph marks — so I assume you are using 'display hidden characters' to see them? Are you sure they are not 'manual line returns' instead? I wouldn't expect so, as in my experience, PDF usually does indeed add 'hard paragraph' marks. However, after you have done your search-&-replace, are they still visible? That I find rather more surprising!

Could it be that in fact there are no longer paragraph breaks as such, but that the PDF ha... See more
You say that they "look like" ordinary paragraph marks — so I assume you are using 'display hidden characters' to see them? Are you sure they are not 'manual line returns' instead? I wouldn't expect so, as in my experience, PDF usually does indeed add 'hard paragraph' marks. However, after you have done your search-&-replace, are they still visible? That I find rather more surprising!

Could it be that in fact there are no longer paragraph breaks as such, but that the PDF has come through with narrow margins set, which are forcing the text to move onto a new line? I've not eprsonally had this problem when actually copying/pasting from PDF, but you DO get it sometimes with OCR programs, which have a nasty habit of creating unwanted columns all over the place!

Could you perhaps try 'select all' and then from the styles dropdown, select 'clear all formatting' — or alternatively, paste it in again using 'paste special' > 'unformatted text'.

By all means feel free to send me your doc, or an extract from it, and I can take a look at if for you if you wish. ▲ Collapse
 
esperantisto
esperantisto  Identity Verified
Local time: 20:44
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Show the file Aug 2, 2012

Unless you share the problematic file, any speculation on the subject will be useless.
 
adrienneiii
adrienneiii
United States
Local time: 10:44
Spanish to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks for your replies Aug 3, 2012

Hello there, gentlemen, thanks for trying to help. I still don't know what caused this issue - I've never had any difficulty replacing paragraph marks with spaces before. But I've managed to get the file in Word format from my client, which makes everything a lot easier. So it's academic now.

Thanks again!
 


To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator:

Moderator(s) of this forum
Maya Gorgoshidze[Call to this topic]
Prachya Mruetusatorn[Call to this topic]

You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request »

Removing repeated paragraph breaks after pasting from PDF






TM-Town
Manage your TMs and Terms ... and boost your translation business

Are you ready for something fresh in the industry? TM-Town is a unique new site for you -- the freelance translator -- to store, manage and share translation memories (TMs) and glossaries...and potentially meet new clients on the basis of your prior work.

More info »
Protemos translation business management system
Create your account in minutes, and start working! 3-month trial for agencies, and free for freelancers!

The system lets you keep client/vendor database, with contacts and rates, manage projects and assign jobs to vendors, issue invoices, track payments, store and manage project files, generate business reports on turnover profit per client/manager etc.

More info »