Adding line/carriage breaks to long lines

[geraldike]

There are times when it is more convenient to have a long paragraph broken into smaller line-length pieces. To make a long story short I would like to have a paragraph like this

broken up by putting carriage returns after “design”, “and”, “frames”, “quickly”, etc. Each line becomes a paragraph. Is there a way to do this in LO?

I used to do this when I was using Word, but I can’t remember how. I think I used another, simpler text tool (a Mac program called Edit) but I can’t find one on Windows that does the same thing.

[EarnestAl]

That sounds like solving one problem by creating a worse error elsewhere.

Shorter lines are easier to read so use two columns in the page or if that is inconvenient, then add a section with two columns.

Or by editing the text itself, you could make each sentence into its own paragraph.

[geraldike]

I know about columns in Write. What I specifically want this for is when I import text into Calc to analyze it (number of words, number of a’s, number of b’s, etc.). I know I have a less sophisticated approach, perhaps, but I find it easier to do those things when I don’t have a thousand-character text in one Calc cell. That becomes really cumbersome.

I could import into Calc dividing it into pieces by using a space delimiter, but if the line is long enough it overflows the number of columns. It also causes other problems.

I was just wondering if there is a way of splitting the lines up automatically like I was able to do when I was using a Mac.

I guess a good workaround would be to do a search and put a carriage control after each period.

Thanks for your response.

[mahengrui1]

You can try text editors such as Notepad++ whose function is called ‘split lines’

[geraldike]

One problem with this approach is that you still wind up with lines of drastically varying length. For my text analysis purposes, it is easiest to have all the lines approximately the same length.

[EarnestAl]

This seems to work.

• Click Edit > Selection Mode >Block Area or press Alt+Shift+F8
• Select your text, copy, and paste into Calc
  Cheers, Al

[geraldike]

Yes! That is precisely what I was looking for. Leave it to some obscure little command buried somewhere… Thanks.

[mahengrui1]

Faster: Hold down Alt and start the selection

[ajlittoz]

As @EarnestAl points out, don’t make things worse in Writer trying to fix some unexpected behaviour in Calc. Your problem in not in Writer but in Calc.

You can fix the issue either globally (but it may have side-effects on other cells in your spreadsheet) or on the cell receiving your pasted text. I’ll explain the “local” fix.

1. Select the cell where you paste your text (omit this step for the “global” fix)
2. Format>Cells, go to `Alignment tab
3. In Properties section tick Wrap text automatically
4. Press OK

You may also adjust Text Alignment settings because Calc tends to vertically center text in cell adding padding space above and below, seemingly proportional to text volume.