For this your best bet is a Find and Replace using wildcards. Graham Mayor's
article at
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm is my reference
on this; I don't use wildcards often enough to remember how to do it.
Assuming you want to reduce any number of spaces exceeding one to a single
space, here's the combo you need:
1. Click the More button in the Replace dialog, then check the "Use
wildcards" box.
2. In the "Find what" box, type
space{2,}
where space represents a space inserted by pressing the spacebar once.
3. In the "Replace with" box insert one space (using the spacebar).
4. Click Replace All.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site:
http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
"Linda (RQ)" wrote in message
...
Suzanne,
Your Ctrl+E key stroke has been great. Any ideas for spaces in the middle
of a paragraph?
Thanks,
Linda
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
One easy way to remove leading spaces is just to Ctrl+E to center the
text.
If you want it left aligned (or indented) you can then Ctrl+L to return
it
to the margin, but in your case you do want it centered, so you can just
leave it.
The "best" font to use is some combination of (a) the font you like best
and
(b) a font that is commonly available. If you're shooting for
portability,
it's "safest" to use one of the Windows Core Fonts (this pretty much
means
Times New Roman and Arial) or at least fonts that ship with most Office
versions (you can get lists of these from
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/). I probably do 98% of my
documents in TNR and Arial, and this has the advantage that those fonts
are
not only quite readable but also "invisible": they don't call attention
to
themselves because so many people use them.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup
so
all may benefit.
"Linda RQ" wrote in message
...
Suzanne,
Thanks for your suggestion. Both ways are going to be painful. Since
spaces were used to center and align things the process is still time
consuming after removing the formatting. I have a document that is 6
pages
long. Most of the lines of text begin with like 20 or so spaces to
center
that text in the middle. I copied a line of spaces and opened up find
and
replace then pasted this in the find box (which it looks like there is
nothing in there) when I replaced that with nothing, it removed all
lines
with that many spaces and seemed to keep the Normal Style. Do you
think
that will cause some strange style in the background or before or after
that
line of text?
What do you mean by copy editing?
Is there a "best" font to use?
Thanks,
Linda
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
I would be badly tempted to retype them, but that decision would be
based
at
least in part on the knowledge that they would almost certainly need
copy
editing, and I would do that as I typed.
Short of that, assuming you have hard copy to refer to, I'd remove
all
the
formatting from the documents, reduce everything to Normal or Body
Text
style, and then copy/paste all but the last paragraph into a new
document
(in hopes of leaving any stray styles behind).
In either case, using the hard copy, figure out what styles you
actually
need (make sure you set up outline numbering based on
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numb...umbering.html),
define
those styles, and apply them as needed.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup
so
all may benefit.
"Linda RQ" wrote in message
...
Hi Everyone,
Using Word 2003. Many of my documents started out from word 2.0. I
am
working on fixing a few hundred departmental/hospital policies that
are
badly mangled. The original document has all of the policies and is
400
pages. I have to seperate the policies and each policy needs to be
a
seperate document. The user basically copies the heading which is 3
lines
and centered by using the space bar, scrolls down to a new page,
pastes
that
then copies other common document (Like Policy #, Section, Date,
etc)
properties and just changes the text to reflect the new policy
number.
She then types the new policy or perhaps copies parts from one
document
or
another. Needless to say it's a mangled mess. I have played around
a
little trying to remove the formatting but it isn't going well.
Would
it
be
best to just re-type them? Many of the policies have numbered lists
which
were done many different ways but I don't believe anyone used the
numbering
tool, they typed the number and tabbed or spaced over to line things
up.
If I do retype them, what is the best way to keep new styles from
getting
created? The only comon items are the facility heading, then a
group
of
fields to fill in and at the bottom of each policy is a place for a
physician to sign. Is using a header and footer the best way?
I thought the group of fields to fill in should be a table with the
borders
not visable and I was thinking of making the items for the physician
to
sign
a table as well.
Thanks,
Linda