formating question

[old guy]

I have a text document that was typed so that each sentence is a new line. Can I reformat it so that each sentence follows the previous.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Yes, this is easy enough to do with the right tools… What OS? What software?


Stephen Marsh

 

[old guy]

windows xp, word, publisher, indesign ect.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

I would put it into InDesign and do a search for ".^p" and replace with ". " You might have to use ". ^p" instead.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

A slightly different method in InDesign is to use the GREP tab in the find/change box, it would probably depend on the source text on whether this produced the desired result compared to the suggestion from PricelineNegotiator.

GREP

Find what:

\r

Change to:

\s

( or perhaps ~. )

The above GREP may leave double word spaces, so then use the built-in GREP query to find/change Multiple Space to Single Space. I don’t know GREP/RegEx, so there my be a better method or a way to string the two searches together etc.


Stephen Marsh

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Mac OS users have TextWrangler or BBEdit from Bare Bones Software which offer GREP as an option in find/replace. TextWrangler also has a nice option to “remove line breaks” in selected text, which is sometimes all one needs.

MS Windows users could use Notepad++ or cedt which both offer RegEx in search/replace.

There are probably many other options out there.


Stephen Marsh

 

[Tim-Ellis]

I would put it into InDesign and do a search for ".^p" and replace with ". " You might have to use ". ^p" instead.

Hello Old Guy,

This technique works in Word too. (Unless Microsft have removed it)

 

[Tim-Ellis]

Hello Old Guy,

Like Stephen says TextWrangler is an excellent freeware app for this kind of thing and has other nice features too.

If you find ever find that the text is broken into smaller groups of words or letters then

Use Illustrator and have a go with John Wundes excellent script Join Text Frames.js

www.wundes.com

It links multiple lines of together text into a single text frame. Even if those text objects are individual objects.

After that you can transfer the text to another app for "word processing".

Copy the attachment below to:

/Applications/Adobe Illustrator CC 2014/Presets.localized/en_GB/Scripts/

(The folder structure on your Mac may be slightly different depending on CS version and language)

And when you restart Illustrator it will be available in FILE > SCRIPTS

 

[old guy]

Thanks for the input. backspacing one line at a time would have been a pain.