Hello,
the following works for me (I strongly recommend you make a working copy of your file and you work on the copy and you have View -> [x] Formatting Marks
ticked).
The idea is:
- Replace the paragraph marks with text by a line feed
- Replace text within a verse as per requirements (first line to start with
"
and last line to end with "
- Optional: Replace line feed by paragraphs
Prerequisites:
- Last line contains 2 paragraphs
- Your file matches exactly the definition made in your question and my comment (Do not even consider to use the procedure if there is any deviation from the 4 verse lines + 1 empty paragraph line pattern.)
- You have extension https://extensions.libreoffice.org/ex... installed.
- You ticked
[x] Regular expressions
with Alternative Find & Replace dialog
Step 1: Replace the paragraph marks with text by a line feed
Search for: (.+)\p
Replace: \1\n
The following screenshot shows the result after the replacement:

Step 2: Replace text within a verse as per requirements (first line to start with "
and last line to end with "
)
Search for: (.+)\n(.+)\n(.+)\n(.+)\n\p
Replace: "\1\n\2\n\3\n\4"\n\p
The following screenshot shows the result after the replacement:

Step 3: Optional: Replace line fed by paragraphs
Search for: \n
Replace: \p
The following screenshot shows the result after the replacement:

Remark Tried to figure out more sophisticated pattern, but got none working. May be due to my own ignorance (most probably) or may be the AltSearch is not working the way it should (e.g. can't get it working using (.*)
patterns, this used (.+)
, which worked.
Tested using LibreOffice:
Version: 6.3.3.2, Build ID: a64200df03143b798afd1ec74a12ab50359878ed
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 4.12; UI render: default; VCL: kde5;
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US, Calc: threaded
Update Please see the following file, which contains the double quotes at the beginning of the text (after the number) and all of the " ❖ " symbols removed.
C:\fakepath\Verses-v05-No-Symbol-Quote-after-Number-RePara.odt
Some missing information - I assume:
View -> [x] Formatting Marks
is activated at the end of a line). In other words: There a four paragraphs per verse.Right?
Do you have a spying agent on my machine? :-) Yes you are spot on