I was afraid that might be the case, Jay. But having it confirmed by an
expert helps keep me focused. Thanks for all you guys do- it's great to be
able to ask specifics and get back knowledgeable input.
f
"Jay Freedman" wrote:
Unfortunately, I don't think there will ever be a "universal" autoformat. We
might get close if someone evolves a true artificial intelligence that
_understands_ natural language rather than just following set rules. But,
having been a copy editor at one point in my life, I know that even
intelligent humans often disagree about how text should be written and
formatted.
If the material you want to format has a uniform and predictable layout, so
the transformation from the original format to the desired format can be
expressed in unvarying rules, then a macro can be constructed to handle it.
If you just want to dump arbitrary text into Word and have it formatted to
your liking, then manual intervention and cleanup is always going to be
required.
fofficecommunityk wrote:
Thanks, Jay. I appreciate the prompt reply, and the link which was
helpful.
The article did state:
Even when the amount of text is very large, there is no really good
alternative to manual editing. But if you Paste Special as
Unformatted Text and run AutoFormat, you may find that Word is almost
as clever as you are at finding where a paragraph ends.
Jay, do you think that it is possible to come up with a "universal"
auto format? Or are there just too many features in word processing
for that? It sure would be nice to just highlight and then hit a
key, and all text is from margin to margin without lines being drop
or shortened.
"Jay Freedman" wrote:
fofficecommunityk wrote:
After pasting text into word, the lines were only about 5 words
long; auto format and margin setting did nothing neither did clear
formatting. I can go to the end of each line, hit delete and pull
up the next line. But that would take much time. Is there a more
efficient way?
Thanks-
f
See http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Format...eanWebText.htm.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.