Pasting text from web pages contains strange line breaks

JPBinLA

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Mar 23, 2004, 2:42:01 AM3/23/04

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I copied and pasted a large amount of text from a web page into a blank
word document and the pasted text contains strange manual line breaks
throughout the whole document. I have tried using the find/replace
function, and searched for manual line breaks and paragraph marks but
the search function never finds the line breaks. I have highlighted
the whole document and tried to clear formatting, as well as tried
using "paste special" to paste without formatting, but the pesky line
breaks are still there. Is there any way, outside of manually going
through the whole document line by line to delete the ones that are in
the middle of sentences?

I've attached an example of what the text looks like after I pasted it
from the web site.

Thanks in advance!

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP - DELETE UPPERCASE CHARACTERS FROM EMAIL ADDRESS

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Mar 24, 2004, 2:47:59 AM3/24/04

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Click on the ś (Show/Hide) button and then post back here with a description
of the character that appears at the end of each line that contains an
unwanted linebreak.

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Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
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Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"JPBinLA" <JPBinLA...@nospam.WordForums.com> wrote in message
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Suzanne S. Barnhill

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Mar 24, 2004, 6:00:35 PM3/24/04

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If they are true paragraph breaks, you can search for ^p and replace with
nothing. If they're line breaks, you can search for ^l (that's a lowercase
L) and replace with nothing. Occasionally, line breaks will be displayed as
paragraph breaks, in which case you'll need to use ^013. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/FindingSpecialCharacters.htm, which
contains the following:

Sometimes when you paste in from other applications, non-printing characters
paste in that display as paragraph marks but don't behave like “proper”
paragraph breaks should – they behave like manual line breaks. The character
code for a paragraph mark is 13 (as can be shown be selecting one and
running a macro containing the line: MsgBox Asc(Selection.Text)).

Replacing ^013 with ^p fixes the problem.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"David" <anon...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E3CBC5D5-68BE-4ACD...@microsoft.com...
> I have a similar problem. I have text that was OCR'ed from a two column
layout. As a result, I have text that won't fill the whole line. The end
of each line contains the hard return, paragraph symbol which I cannot
remove when I paste. Is there a way to remove all the hard returns from the
document (So that it wraps at the margins normally). "Remove formatting"
from the Styles and Formatting task pane has no effect.
> Thanks!