Word Processors

[longknife]

I need some help and hope someone can at least point me in the right direction.

The majority of my time on the computer is spent conducting research - including downloading and trying to make sense of poor formatting, In historical books. That means a lot of finding and replacing to correct errors in the books.

I stopped using MW Word some time ago as it lacked some of the editorial features I cannot do without - and I don't yet have the $$$ to by the office version of MSWord.

So, I found, downloaded, and have been using OpenOffice which has the tracking feature I need to review and correct manuscripts from my editor. I also found another word processor, LibreOffice, which has the same features but better user support.

Here's my problem - in MSWord, there are special characters in the find and replace feature that make it easy to find and replace non-printing characters such as carriage returns. ^p is what it uses.

However, I can't find the special characters for OO and LO. If any of you know where to find them, PLEASE give me a link! The only one I can remember is searching for $ to find carriage returns. Now, I desperately need to know what the special character is for "Carriage return"!!!

Thanks in advance.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Documentation/How Tos/Regular Expressions in Writer - Apache OpenOffice Wiki

 

[Granny]

I need some help and hope someone can at least point me in the right direction.

The majority of my time on the computer is spent conducting research - including downloading and trying to make sense of poor formatting, In historical books. That means a lot of finding and replacing to correct errors in the books.

I stopped using MW Word some time ago as it lacked some of the editorial features I cannot do without - and I don't yet have the $$$ to by the office version of MSWord.

So, I found, downloaded, and have been using OpenOffice which has the tracking feature I need to review and correct manuscripts from my editor. I also found another word processor, LibreOffice, which has the same features but better user support.

Here's my problem - in MSWord, there are special characters in the find and replace feature that make it easy to find and replace non-printing characters such as carriage returns. ^p is what it uses.

However, I can't find the special characters for OO and LO. If any of you know where to find them, PLEASE give me a link! The only one I can remember is searching for $ to find carriage returns. Now, I desperately need to know what the special character is for "Carriage return"!!!

Thanks in advance.

If you're using a computer program (such as Word) you should not be using carriage returns - the program will take you to the next line automatically. If you use carriage returns (by hitting the "enter" key) at the end of each line you are going to have one screwed up mess when you go back and make edits - additional words are going to shift those "carriage returns" all over the page and you're going to have to make a line by line correction to delete the "carriage return."

Depends on the format you're trying to achieve - if you want something that appears to be columns with text use the "table" format and lines will automatically fall in place within each cell of the table.

Sometimes you do need a column for simple stuff like columns of numbers and for that you need to set tabs in the document and then just tab over to each column.

Don't know what you mean by characters for OO and LO - can you tell me more about those - what the mean or what they accomplish?

 

[longknife]

Documentation/How Tos/Regular Expressions in Writer - Apache OpenOffice Wiki

Thanks for the link.

Now that I've updated to version 4, it works much better.

 

[longknife]

To Granny -

I NEVER use carriage returns while writing.

My problem comes from copying and pasting documents to my OO files. On many, because of the formatting, each line has a carriage return that I need to remove. I've just been looking for an easier/faster way of doing it.

Here's a sample of what I'm dealing with:

Americans talked also of purchase, and their gov
ernment had openly made propositions to Mexico; but
their chief reliance was in the manifest destiny of
their nation to absorb all territory westward to the
Pacific. There was a wide-spread popular feeling that
California belonged by some sort of natural right to
the republic. Men were not wanting to advocate its
acquisition, right or wrong, by conquest if necessary;
and even those Americans who combated such a pol
icy had little doubt respecting the ultimate result.

As you can see, it's a nightmare, not including the endless typos.