I converted a pdf to odt. The text is in a narrow column to the left of the page. I want it to be “normal” in that it extends all the way across and is in paragraphs just as if I had opened a fresh, blank Writer document and started writing. I don’t think it’s a margin issue. Any help? Thanks!
How did you convert to .odt, by OCR? Some OCR programs put a line break or a return at the end of each line. Click View > Formatting marks (Ctrl+F10) to see the marks
If you see them at the end of each line then you can use Find & Replace (Ctrl+H)
- In Find enter the mark for a line break
\n - In Replace enter a space
- Expand Other options and tick Regular Expressions
- Tick Current Selection if you want to limit it to just a selected portion of the text
- Click Replace All
Note: if they are not line breaks, but paragraph breaks, then in Find enter $ instead to find the end of a line.
See Using Regular Expressions in Text Searches and List of Regular Expressions
Maybe it has been pasted as a section. Right click on the text and, if Edit section is visible in the context menu, then select Edit section then, in the dialogue click Remove
Maybe it is in a table, if you are in a table you should be able to see a icon bar with table icons on it. Press Ctrl+A twice to select the the entire table, then click Table > Convert > Table to text
Thank you. They are paragraph breaks. I typed $ into find and the only thing that came up was an actual $ (dollar sign) in my text. Any thoughts?
Ok I found how to get $ to work. The text is now normally spaced, but there is a blue dot between every single word.
Yup. That is to show that there is a space there, it is screen only, doesn’t print or export. I usually work with Formatting Marks turned on; being blue I can ignore them when I don’t need to look at them but they are useful to tell if it is a tab instead of a space, etc.
You can customise what you see in Formatting marks by clicking Tools > Options > LibreOffice Writer > Formatting Aids, I would advise seeing more rather than fewer. There is a bit of an explanation at Formatting Aids
You can turn them off by simply clicking View > Formatting marks (Ctrl+F10)
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