how do i delete non-printing symbols like paragraph markers, in order to close up text?
in word, it’s fairly easy to delete these symbols once you show them in the text, but i cannot find a way to do this in libre office.
Quoting @Indrid: “…delete non-printing symbols like paragraph markers, in order to close up text?”
The “markers” (Pilcrow) aren’t content of the text anyway, but only are formatting aids. Suppressing formatting aids won’t “close up text”.
Assuming you want to delete empty paragraphs: See my answer below.
Other whitespace can also be deleted with the help of F&R. Edit your question adding more details if needed.
Given the “in word, it’s fairly easy to delete these symbols once you show them in the text”, you are familiar with showing “non-printing symbols” (formatting marks in Writer’s terms) concept, and thus your question is not about that (so answers suggesting you to use that option to control the visibility are unrelated to your question). However, you must realize that the number of answers about something unrelated to your question show that your question has major flaws which disallow people to easily understand your problem and your intent.
E.g., that “in order to close up text” - what that could possibly mean? where the term “close up text” is defined? how could people know what you want to achieve? A sample, like “Say, here is the text: … ; and I want to make it like that: …” would help.
Smart questions are key to getting good answers.
@mikekaganski (and all):
Regarding the comment by the OriginalQuestioner on my answer, I still assume, he (f/m) isn’t actually interested in suppressing formatting aids, but in deleting whitespace.
@Lupp: which is also my perception - and my whole point: people answer to something different (suggesting to enable/disable display of formatting marks) because the question is worded poorly.
Assuming you’re still on this thread after all these years, the simple answer is to use the Find and Replace function, and in the Find box, put the dollar symbol ($) and in “Other Options” select “Regular Expressions” and deselect everything else. Then hit “Replace”. That should do the trick. Not quite as intuitive as MS Word since it uses the $ expression instead of the paragraph mark.
- Select the range you want to delete empty paragraphs from.
- Call
F&R(Find and Replace). - Enable Regular expressions.
- If wanted enable
Current selection only - Enter
^$behindFind: - Make sure that the line behind
Replace:is empty - Call
Replace All.
===Edit 2020-08-24 about 09:25 UTC===
Slightly edited: Only 3 typos fixed.
Hi There,
Thank you but this did not work to eliminate the blank space set off by paragraph markers.
Precisely as described, it works for me flawlessly.
The attached demo shows the dialog in images.
It only removes ermpty paragraphs. It doesn’t touch different whitespace like tabsteps, spaces, or hard linebreaks.
If you also want to delete different whitespace, or if you don’t know the difference between paragraph breaks and hard linebreaks, please complete your question by editing, and give more details.
ask261836deleteEmptyParagraphs.odt
Even better: Attach a little example document showing what you have, and what you want to get.
Maybe the question omits important information like “spaces are because there are spacings above/below paragraphs defined, so the goal is not to remove empty paragraphs, but to make spacing smaller”, or the like?
It’s nothing to delete, only a view setting, turn off menu View → Formatting Marks (Ctrl+F10).
(and it’s not common, only Writer, please retag).
Hello,
I need to do more than view the non-printing symbols. I need to delete them. But I don’t know if that’s possible in Writer like it is in Word.
I posted under
‘common’ because the tag field would not accept anything else.
menu View-Formatting marks
I think your question and what you want to acheive might be two separate things. I assume you have found the formatting marks from the answers; I find it is a good idea to have them turned on most of the time.
The writer’s job is to convey information readily to the reader. Choosing words, creating sentences and including punctuation is part of that. Making it easy for the reader to follow the text by using good layout is another part and this is where white space really helps to separate lines and paragraphs.
I guess that you want to reduce the spacing between paragraphs.
- The direct formatting way (Microsoft
way) which is less than ideal, would be to select the
paragraph(s), clickFormat > Paragraph..., in the window that opens, click the tab Indents & Spacing and change the spacing for Above paragraph, Below paragraph, and possible even Line Spacing, OK out. Those settings are also available in the sidebar which can be left open while you work. - Change the style of the paragraphs. This assumes you are using consistent styles without direct formatting. Click in a paragraph of the style that you want to change, press F11. The sidebar will switch to Styles and Formatting pane, your paragraph style will be highlighted, right-click on it and select Modify…, in the window that opens, click the tab Indents & Spacing and change the spacing for Above paragraph, Below paragraph, and possible even Line Spacing, OK out. All paragraphs of that style will update to reflect the change. This is a powerful tool to change appearance, fonts, everything quickly and easily.
I recommend using the Writer Guide as a reference
2020-08-25 Deleting a “box” from HTML
Regarding the first option, I’m not sure what to set the values to. I tried setting the ‘Below Paragraph’ value to ‘0’ since that’s what seemed to make sense, but that doubled up the problem rather than fixing it.
Also, in fact I AM using many styles in the document, since it’s a news aggregation
document, with pictures and copy and insignia from different news sources. Maybe there’s a better Libre Office program to use other than Writer.
In Word you can actually delete non-printing symbols and the text will adjust itself to the change (e.g. deleting a paragraph symbol automatically moves all the text below it upward). I’m basically trying to figure out if I can do this in Writer since I might like to migrate the aggregation newsletter to L.O. Writer.
Deleting the paragraph symbol will merge the following paragraph into the current paragraph.
There can be a space above a paragraph too. In Word the space is the largest of the above and the below space. In Writer the below spacing of the current paragraph is add to the above spacing of the following paragraph.
The likely problem you are facing are HTML tables containing the text taken from websites. You would either need to edit row heights or extract the text from the table. Copy the text only and paste outside a table, or convert table to text.
Using styles is not just having a load of random styles from various different places
Cheers, Al
Thank you.
It sounds to me like you are saying that this is theoretically possible in Writer - to delete formatting symbols and have the text respond to the deletion.
However, these formatting symbols cannot be deleted throughout my Writer text. The first step in deleting them I presume is selecting them, and I find that this cannot be done. They cannot be selected.
I did not place any Styles into this document using Writer.
The particular problem I have right now is a blank box that is a graphic space between a headline and a photograph.
It looks like the entire article which I have copied and pasted is being treated as a single photograph or object or table, but I’m not sure which.
In any case, in Word, you can manipulate the formatting marks easily across and through objects and photos and tables, and there must be a different logic here that I’m learning.
How can I tell what Writer is considering the imported article to be (i.e., table, photo, etc.)?
If you added a sample saved in .odt in your original question with the problem area I could have a look.
In the meantime, I copied some stuff from a recipe site which has some “boxes” in the text. I have added the image in my answer above. Just inserting the cursor before the "box"and pressing Del deletes the box. Possibly there is something more recalcitrant in your text that you could give sample.
Let’s see if I understand you …
With the ¶ toggled ”ON,” my list of some of Luke Short’s books look like this…
… Play a lone hand¶
… 1987-¶
… War on the Cimarron¶
… 1977-¶
… Ambush¶
… 1988-¶
With the ¶ toggled “OFF,” it appears like this:
Play a lone hand
1987-
War on the Cimarron
1977-
Ambush
1988-
When toggled on the ¶ indicates a hard-return. Please note that the hard-returns are STORED but not displayed.
I suspect that what you want to do is delete the ¶ after each entry on the list, something like this:
{toggled on}
… Play a lone hand…1987-… War on the Cimarron… 1977- … Ambush… 1988-¶
{toggled off}
Play a lone hand 1987- War on the Cimarron 1977 Ambush 1988-
Am I understanding you?