Find and Replace double paragraph breaks

[Caliope425]

I receive a lot of documents by email. I copy and paste these into LibreOffice
Writer.

In these documents, the lines are short and they each end
with a paragraph break; between two paragraphs there are two paragraph breaks.

I just installed Linux Mint KDE 17.3 last night. It came with LibreOffice
Writer 5.0.3.2.

In my previous LibreOffice Writer install [I don’t know which version it was],
I was able to use Alternative Find and Replace to clean this up in 4 steps:

1. Replace \p\p with xxxxxx - this would replace the true paragraphs, the
   portions separated by two paragraph breaks with a nonsense phrase, I used xxxxxx

2. Replace \p with an empty space - this replaces the extraneous paragraph
   break at the end of each short line of text with an empty space

3. Replace double empty spaces with single space - this makes things prettier

4. Replace xxxxxx with \p - This restores proper paragraph breaks at the end of
   each paragraph.

However, with this new version of LibreOffice Writer, Alternative find and
replace refuses to find instances of two paragraph breaks. It says noe are
found. It will find each break one at a time if I search for \p, but if I
search for \p\p, it says there are none in the document - but there are many.

Did something change in version 5.0.3.2? I am doing things exactly the vdery
same way now as I did yesterday with my previous install of Linux, but today
the new install just won’t work.

I’d appreciate any advice or alternatives that someone might recommend. Thank
you very much for reading this and for your help.

[paul1149]

Are you using AFR v 1.4.1? It seems to be working here on LO 5.1.2.2 in Linux.

[Caliope425]

Yes, I just found it and installed 1,4. Same thing, it does not FIND two paragraph breaks. It’s a big problem for me.

I use it for documents¶

like this one that have very few¶

words in each line, but they all¶

are part of one paragraph¶

¶

And the next paragraph starts here,¶

but I need each line to not end with¶

a paragraph break, but to just be a continuous¶

line. And I need to replace the two ¶¶ with¶

just one paragraph break¶

I hope that my example above makes it look more clear.

Alt Find and Replace will no longer find the two ¶¶ that separate paragraphs, but it will still find each one individually.

edited to remove:
No … I’m using 1.3.2. I don’t even know where I got it so I don’t know where to look for the update.

[paul1149]

1. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I do the same often.
2. I just checked again and it’s working fine here.
3. See http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/alternative-dialog-find-replace-for-writer

[Caliope425]

I JUST saw your message and I realized I had downloaded version 1.4, and yours gave me 1.4.1. Huge difference because your 1.4.1 works exactly the way I want it to and exactly the same way as it previously did. Even though another poster showed me a way that works the way I want it to, this way is most familiar for me. Now I have 2 choices and that’s a good thing.

Thank you so much for the help.

[PYS]

Hi

In 3 steps:

1. Search For: ^$ Replace With: XXXXX Other options: check Regular expressions
2. Search For: $ Replace With: (a space) Other options: check Regular expressions
3. Search For: XXXXX Replace With: \n Other options: check Regular expressions

Regards

[Caliope425]

It works. It’s exact.Thank you very much for the fix. You have no idea how important this was for me. Thank you.

But now I’m curious, did this method always work? I always used Alternative Find and Replace, but this method works directly inside the program. The Alternative Find and Replace doesn’t work anymore. I don’t care because this one works and it seems to work faster.

Thank you again.

[PYS]

Yes I think I used it since OOo 1.1.4,

Thank you for feedback - Regards