[mso] Re: Formatting a plain-text document in Word 2003

  • From: "David Smart" <smartware@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 20:21:37 +1000

I think you will find that your problem is that each line of text has a hard 
return on the end of it.  This is treated by Word as a paragraph mark.  So 
you have lots of single-line paragraphs.

Word does not justify the last line of a paragraph by default, and I don't 
think there is any way to make it do so.

What you need to do is remove the hard returns at the end of each line 
within paragraphs, but leave them there at the end of the paragraphs.

This involves an intermediate step ...

Search/replace each paragraph mark (^P) into something that doesn't appear 
elsewhere in the document.  I find that "~" is  usually safe, but you need 
to do a find to check that your chosen character doesn't appear.

Then, you convert any pairs of ~~ back to ^P^P, thus putting hard returns on 
the end of your paragraphs.  Lastly, you need to convert all the remaining ~ 
to spaces.

Now, your paragraphs will justify as you want them to.

Notes ...

It is possible that you have a space before each hard return in the lines 
inside a paragraph.  If that's the case, then your last convert will just 
remove the ~ instead of converting them to spaces.

If (like me) you use styles that put inter-paragraph spacing on paragraphs, 
then your ~~ replaces to a single ^P and the style will put the correct 
spacing in.

If (like me) you always put two spaces after the full-stop (etc) at the end 
of sentences, you need to manually pick up the situation where a sentence 
ends at the end of a line.  There is no easy search/replace for this, and 
you might not want to bother.

Regards, Dave S
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Shyamal Gupta" <esgee47@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2006 2:47 PM
Subject: [mso] Re: Formatting a plain-text document in Word 2003


> On 5/27/06, James S. Huggins (MSO) <MicrosoftOffice@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>> I have several large plain-text documents which I'd like to keep in Word 
>> =
> fo=3D
>> rmat.
>>
>> The problem is that when opening them in Word 2003, they come out in
>> quite ragged format. I'd prefer to have them right-justified.
>>
>> Which is a pretty laborious process, going line by line.
>>
>> Is there an easier way to right-justify the entire document ?
>>
>> Thanks.
>> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>>
>>
>> I presume you mean fully justified (both left and right).
>
> That's right.
>
>>
>> I also presume that you are aware that justified text is not plain-text.
>
> Yes.
>
>>
>> That said, the easiest way is to change the style "normal", to be fully
>> justified.
>
> I did, but I still have to go through this laborious process line by line.
>
> Maybe I'm missing something simple ?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --=20
> Shyamal Gupta
> Mumbai, India
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