How to quickly format a large chunk of text

[iiandyiiii]

I have a large chunk of text (let's say it's part of a novel) that was written in emails with pretty much zero formatting. There are paragraphs, but the indentations consist of hitting the spacebar four times. Is there any way to easily give this a "normal" format (tabbed indentations, etc.), using MS Word or Open Office?

[PJMom]

http://www.ehow.com/how_6851951_form...documents.html

[tdn]

Originally Posted by iiandyiiii

I have a large chunk of text (let's say it's part of a novel) that was written in emails with pretty much zero formatting. There are paragraphs, but the indentations consist of hitting the spacebar four times. Is there any way to easily give this a "normal" format (tabbed indentations, etc.), using MS Word or Open Office?

There are more elegant ways, but find and replace should work well for spaced indentations. Replace all instances of " " (space space) with "^t". Then replace "^t^t" with "^t", enough times until you get zero results.

[iiandyiiii]

Thanks. Both suggestions are very helpful.

[Munch]

Originally Posted by tdn

There are more elegant ways, but find and replace should work well for spaced indentations. Replace all instances of " " (space space) with "^t". Then replace "^t^t" with "^t", enough times until you get zero results.

For people who put 2 spaces after a period, that's not a very good idea. If her indentions are space-space-space-space, then she should do a find and replace of " " (four spaces) with ^t.