# Easy way to remove all paragraph breaks **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 13, 2016, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087 "2016-04-13T17:06:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/1 "2016-04-13T17:06:26Z")
Recently I’ve had to copy a lot of text thet when copied looks like this. So each line I have to go to the end, press the “delete” key until the next line comes up a line, then add back the space. Is there a way, using Open Office to automatically remove all paragraph breaks, as adding in the ones that belong would be easier than going and removing all of the ones that shouldn’t be there one at a time? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/2 "2016-04-13T17:14:14Z")
In word you can do a find and replace to replace ^l with ^s and that will replace manual line breaks with nonbreaking spaces. I’m sure OpenOffice has something similar. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/3 "2016-04-13T17:18:01Z")
It does. And it never occurred to me to use it to do this. Brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/4 "2016-04-13T17:30:59Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > In word you can do a find and replace to replace ^l with ^s and that will replace manual line breaks with nonbreaking spaces. > > I’m sure OpenOffice has something similar. > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > It does. And it never occurred to me to use it to do this. Brilliant. **RNATB** , you seem to be claiming that you can use **Inner Stickler’s** method in Open Office. I can’t see how it works, could you expand further please? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/5 "2016-04-13T17:43:04Z")
See [this](https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23500) help thread. You can use \*\* \*\* in find and replace to remove tabs, and \*\* \*\* to remove line breaks (you can bring up the find and replace function by hitting “control + F”. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/6 "2016-04-13T17:50:33Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > See [this](https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23500) help thread. You can use \*\* \*\* in find and replace to remove tabs, and \*\* > \*\* to remove line breaks (you can bring up the find and replace function by hitting “control + F”. OK, I’ve ticked “regular expressions” and tried to find both and and it just says it is not found. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/7 "2016-04-13T17:59:09Z")
Argh. If you don’t mind waiting I will try it myself when I get home (in about six hours) and report back. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/8 "2016-04-13T18:03:50Z")
I copied the OP’s text into Libre Office because I don’t have a copy of Open Office and I was able to use the Find and Replace to search for /n and replace it with a space. I did have regular expressions checked. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/9 "2016-04-13T18:25:03Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I copied the OP’s text into Libre Office because I don’t have a copy of Open Office and I was able to use the Find and Replace to search for /n and replace it with a space. I did have regular expressions checked. OK, I tried my own text as presented here and it worked. It still doesn’t work for the paragraph-broken other text though. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/10 "2016-04-13T18:34:35Z")
I believe $ by itself in the find field will search for paragraph markers. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/11 "2016-04-13T18:34:55Z")
It might be interpreting the blank areas as lots of spaces, then. Try doing find and replace with two spaces in the find bar and one in the replace bar and see if that works. You might have to run it a couple of dozen times (or start with, say, six spaces). ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/12 "2016-04-13T18:37:37Z")
Ctrl+F10 will toggle formatting characters being visible. Having them on might help you see better what you’re trying to achieve. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/13 "2016-04-13T18:43:07Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I believe $ by itself in the find field will search for paragraph markers. That worked, thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/14 "2016-04-13T20:26:45Z")
Just did in Word. Holy shit that’s awesome. I’ve been manually formatting quoted pdf docs for literally years when I paste them here. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/easy-way-to-remove-all-paragraph-breaks/752087/15 "2016-04-13T21:34:49Z")
In Word, you can also use the pulldown (I think it’s labeled “more” and pick paragraph marks on the resulting list. Replace with spaces.