LibreOffice 6.4.6.2 doesn’t find double line breaks by using the search string $$ in the FIND text box.
What can I do to find (and replace with something else) double line breaks?
Thanks in advance!
Hello,
Case 1: - Paragraph break (ENTER
)
As per LibreOffice Help - Using Regular Expressions in Text Searches, which states:
A search using a regular expression will work only within one paragraph. To search using a regular expression in more than one paragraph, do a separate search in each paragraph.
you can’t do that, because double line breaks (i.e. end of paragraph entered by ENTER
key) obviously span more than one paragraph.
Case 2: - Empty Paragraph
If you in fact want to replace empty paragraphs, use:
- Menu
Edit -> Find & Replace
Find:^$
Replace:<whatever you want to be the replacement>
Other Options 1:[x] Current selection only
Other Options 2:[x] Regular expressions
- Click
Replace All
Case 3: - Line break (SHIFT+ENTER
)
If you are talking about line breaks entered through SHIFT+ENTER
use:
Use the following procedure:
- Menu
Edit -> Find & Replace
Find:\n\n
Replace:<whatever you want to be the replacement>
Other Options 1:[x] Current selection only
Other Options 2:[x] Regular expressions
- Click
Replace All
Hope that helps.
Not clear in the question if you are searching for
some text¶
¶
or
some text¶
¶
¶
First example solved with case 2 of @anon73440385.
In the second example, you can face it with a few intermediate steps (before trying it, save your file; the formatting after that will be messed up):
- Search for all
$
with Regular expressions, and replace it for a character not used in the document (perhaps█
) - Search for all
██
“and replace with something else” - Search for all
█
and replace with\n
(to recover the paragraphs)
By the way, when searching for all ^$
and replacing for █
, double empty paragraphs will merge in one. Maybe a bug.
Add Answer is reserved for solutions. If you think the answer is not satisfactory, add a comment below, or click edit (below your question) to add more information. Thanks.
I had a document with a bunch of double line breaks when I needed 0 margins and tab indents.
I searched first for the regular expression ^$, and replaced it with QUINCE.
That left a whole bunch of new paragraphs, so I then, without undoing, replaced $ with QUINCE.
This left me with some QUINCE and some QUINCEQUINCE among a mass of words.
I replaced QUINCEQUINCE with \n\t and then QUINCE with \n.
Problem solved, looks perfect now (though the type formatting changed)
This was the most up-to-date version of LO as of Mar '24