I’ve looked for solutions here and can’t seem to find things that I can understand. I need help in editing a former Word document - the person has double-spaced using the return key, plus there are many superfluous Tab marks … In word this was not a problem, I’d simply find ^p^p then replace with ^p … or tab marks ^t^t with ^t or soft returns ^l, etc … Libre Office does not recognise these characters.
Can you help? This is part of my normal editing work flow. I don’t want to go back to Office!
In LibreOffice we have “regular expressions” and an empty paragraph would be ^$
It is a limitation of Find&Replace-patterns to be searched only IN a paragraph.
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Instructions in the following (older, but still valid) thread.
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Yeah, thanks … the regular expessions seem to be talking about this for tabs and a whole host of others EXCEPT paragraph breaks. And, worse it says to use the “back slash” … ie: \t for a tab character, yet nothing happens, in fact nothing works. So even the back slash isn’t working. /sigh
I am now in the process of editing with my DELETE key … it’s going to take ages. If this isn’t resolved then I’m going to have to leave this program. I don’t have the time to do this manually.
Oh and yes the $ is there, but as you said only IN paragraphs. This won’t work.
Also, I cant seem to change format for a specific charact set either… so I format to BODY style, then I had the writers emphasise where they want a heading, etc by using weird characters, I suggest that they use [[ at the beginning, I then find/replace [[ with the format from body to subhead, etc, [ = title, [[ = subhead, you get the drift, yet this isn’t working …
There is not much to resolve…
One option i often use is to copy special characters like tab, nbsb, or “half width space” from the document (Ctrl c), then paste in the search dialogue.
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Some of the hints in the linked thread refer to an extension. That you have to install first.
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Depending on your install you may need to switch on regular expressions first. Newer installs seem to be set to simple pattern instead of regular expressions, as often users from Windows/MSO have never heard anything of regular expressions.
You seem to be panicking, Regular Expressions are in common use but you won’t be able to start learning if you need to get something done urgently. In this case, I suggest that you install the AltSearch extension which has drop down selections to help, AltSearch » Libreoffice Extensions
I’ve tried this tactic. It’s how I usually operate, copy what I want to change, including special characters, etc then typing in the change. This doesn’t work.
Thanks… I’ll take a look at this. Not panicking yet, this is a simple 20 page document, but I’m expecting a manual to be incoming soon and yeah I don’t want to wait for that to arrive on my doorstep with this hassle… will keep you posted
Forget about this. Brackets are already used in regular expressions.
Yep, the braces [ were for word, etc. I still will need something unique if that’s the case. But I will wait for that and try this new “altsearch” extension
OMG … OMG … wow, no! I didn’t see this, just tested and yes this changed those pesky tabs and spaces … this might be my game changer!! and maybe the ALTSEARCH will fix the paragraph commands