Sorry, I forgot to mention that you have to check "Use wildcards" in the
Replace dialog. Also, if your lines of text are shorter than the margin
width (especially since this is text copied from the Web), see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/CleanWebText.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"Uddhava" wrote in message
...
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

You can remove excess spaces by
searching for " {2,}" (without the quotation marks; note the space
before
the opening brace) and replacing with a single space.


Dear Suzanne,

Thanks for your reply.

I assume the problem is not just that the lines are justified

Well it is sometimes something to do with justifying in the sense that I
am
trying to undo the justifying embedded in the original text. For example
take
the first paragraph of the link that I mentioned before -
http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/inada4.htm
This is written in short lines and the multiple spaces are there in the
process of justifying it, but the problem is that this formatting (short
lines and multiple spaces) which I don't want is carried into Word. I can
manage to lose the indentation by pushing the whole block of text to the
left
but I am still stuck with the horrible short lines and multiple spaces.

Anyway I tried your {2,}
space, curly bracket, 2, comma, curly bracket
but it doesn't seem to work - I get '0 replacements were made'