When converting PDF files it keeps lots of broken lines, like in this example:


"Two are of intragalactic origin. They derive from planets whose§
designations by extension of the present star identification system are Alpha Centauri A 4, Boötes—"


As seen, most times it is a Paragraph Return (§) followed by a small caps letter.

I could find the Paragraph Mark and random small caps letters using the Wildcard ^p[a-z], but I found no way to replace the letter with the same one.

Is there a way to find the Paragraph Return+small caps letter and replace the Paragraph Mark with a white space and keeping the same small caps letter?

I am using Ms Word 2013



Thank you in advance for your assistance
Rick

This sort of thing has been asked about many times and there are numerous threads with replies. See, for example: https://www.msofficeforums.com/word/...html#post32907

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Hi Paul. Thanks for the fast reply.
Sorry, not that. I had already tried that macro, but it cleans all the text, and turns it into a single block.
I need cleaning only the ones marked in red.
I attached an example text here so you can see exactly what I need.
One way I just thought of is a macro going letter by letter for all the alphabet.
But I'm totally illiterate in VBA. If you could give me a macro for letter "a", and instructions on how to do it, I could fill in the rest of the alphabet.

Thanks a lot
Rick

You could try your luck with the following wildcard Find/Replace:
Find What: (^13)([a-z])
Replace With: ^32\2

Yeah Robert, thats it. Worked beautifully.
I had recorded one doing it letter by letter - hard-working - and it worked very well, too. But yours is much, much simpler.
Now I thought of another good use for it. Books in PDF, when converted to EPUB for an eReader have the same problem with broken lines. This is a great way to clean them, too before converting to EPUB.

Thanks a lot.

Evidently, then, you hadn't applied the one stricture the post says the code requires - that the text contains two paragraph breaks to differentiate the logical paragraphs from the physical ones.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I really don't know, Paul. As I said before, I'm totally illiterate in VBA. Programming is for the young and adventurous ones, I'm too old for learning now. All I know of macros is using them. I was simply copying and trying them as per the instructions from the post you sent. To follow Robert's idea I first tested it and later I used the Record Macro button and executed the procedure by hand. And now the macro works right. Here is the code Word recorded automatically:

Sub CleanUpPDFText2()
'
' CleanUpPDFText2 Macro
'
'
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "(^13)([a-z])"
.Replacement.Text = "^32\2"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub
_______________
Cheers
Rick

And that post says quite clearly:
None of this requires any experience in programming - just following a few instructions.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]