# Editing Carriage Return Characters in a Word 2007 Document



## laneseda (Mar 22, 2006)

Hello,

My system:
MS Windows XP Home fully updated
MS Office 2007 fully updated

The issue:
I have been sent a very large Word file. Unfortunately, every line of text in the file is terminated with a "print" (^P) character, and every paragraph ends with two such characters. As an example, a paragraph of text would look like this:
Terrorism works, to a large extent, because(^P)
terrorists use the media to(^P)
ensure their cause receives the publicity they desire.(^P)
(^P)​
The question:
How do I go about removing all the carriage return (^P) characters at the end of every line while retaining the same character (the second ^P) to keep the paragraphs apart?

All suggestions will be gratefully received.

Thanks in advance.
Lane


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## jimr381 (Jul 20, 2007)

Here is what I would do. I would find all of the Carriage returns and replace them with line breaks, then I would follow that up by finding all the double line breaks and replacing them with a single carriage return.


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## laneseda (Mar 22, 2006)

Thank you, jimr381, for taking the time to reply to my query. I'll do as you suggest. I may have to do this in stages as the file in question is very large, approximately 16 MB.

Regards,
Lane


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## Noyb (May 25, 2005)

Can't you do a replace using special characters ..
and replace all doubles with a single ..


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## jimr381 (Jul 20, 2007)

Noyb said:


> Can't you do a replace using special characters ..
> and replace all doubles with a single ..


Aye Noyb he can, but I think he also wants to get rid of the paragraph markers between the line items and replace them with soft returns.


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## CarolinaBill (Jan 1, 2006)

I do this from time to time in Word Perfect but the principal applies equally here. You have to Find and Replace in steps.
1. Replace all occurrences of a double line break or hard return with some arbitrary symbol (or symbols) that is not likely to be in the text, for example, "!" This isolates and removes the paragraph identification.
2. Replace all occurrences of a single hard return with a space plus soft return, or line break, or whatever you choose. This takes care of all the lines within a paragraph.
3. Replace all of your special symbols with a double hard return. This restores the paragraph structure.
By Replacing All, you can very rapidly go through a large document. Then there will probably need to be some manual adjustment of exceptions after that.


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