MS Word Gurus - find and replace special characters

[Sac Arrow]

I have a confounding problem. I have a need to search for two hard carriage returns, and replace them with three hard carriage returns. These are paragraph characters, displayed as backwards looking p's.

The MS Office knowledge base says to do a "find and replace" and under "special" select the paragraph (backwards looking p character.) What it inserts is a ^v. Word cannot find the backwards looking p's using this method. It doesn't work. Nor can I select and paste the backwards looking p itself in to the seach box.

Any thoughts?

 

[Anymouse]

Isn't that just an <enter> key?? (Or <return>??)

If so, do <enter> twice in the search, and three times in the replace fields.

 

[Anymouse]

BTW... If there's already three there, it will add an extra one. (Delete two, add three.) You may want to search for three and replace with two first, just to even things up.

 

[SCCutler]

It's easy in WordPerfect.

 

[eman1200]

try ^p

 

[eman1200]

here's what I did:

 

[eman1200]

Yip. Replace:
^p^p

with:
^p^p^p

hehehee, you said 'pp'

 

[Clark1961]

It's easy in WordPerfect.

Spike just volunteered to edit for you Sac.

 

[Sac Arrow]

@eman1200 for the win. That solved it yo.

 

[Sac Arrow]

Spike just volunteered to edit for you Sac.

I'd take him up on it, but the digital publishing houses don't take WP documents.

 

[Sac Arrow]

Isn't that just an <enter> key?? (Or <return>??)

If so, do <enter> twice in the search, and three times in the replace fields.

It is a return yes, but it doesn't work to try to hit a return in the search box. I tried to use a paragraph 'character' when what I needed was a paragraph 'marker.'

 

[Anymouse]

Try <ctrl><return>

 

[airdale]

@eman1200 for the win. That solved it yo.

Just for future reference, clicking that "Special Characters' button at the bottom of the search box will show you all the special character codes. (See post #6. You might have to click a "More" button to see it.) I use ^t, ^p, and ^l quite frequently.

& actually, if ^p worked you were not replacing hard returns, you were replacing paragraph breaks which you get by hitting <return>. A hard return would be, to Word, a manual line break. You get it by hitting <shift-return>. The secret code for them is ^l (lower case L).

 

[Minshall]

Ctrl-C in the word-doc, then Ctrl-V in the search-box. If you don't know where one is, just enter an extra one.

 

[flyingron]

There's no such thing as a "Carriage Return" in a word document. Pressing enter ends a paragraph. Sac Arrow is on the right track.

Frankly, if you're trying to increase space between lines (which are paragraphs of their own), the better thing is to increase the "spacing after" in the paragraph format rather than inserting additional "blank" paragraphs.

 

[Sac Arrow]

There's no such thing as a "Carriage Return" in a word document. Pressing enter ends a paragraph. Sac Arrow is on the right track.

Frankly, if you're trying to increase space between lines (which are paragraphs of their own), the better thing is to increase the "spacing after" in the paragraph format rather than inserting additional "blank" paragraphs.

My purpose for the additional paragraph markers is to create section breaks in between chapters, e.g. a single blank line separating two paragraphs. Most ebook uploaders (e.g. Kindle and Smashwords) accept two consecutive carriage returns (paragraph markers) as a section break. The current one I'm using (draft2digital) requires three consecutive paragraph markers to indicate a section break. It's a little bit annoying but I've got it all figured out.