I have been converting a very large document (9,000 pages) from hardcopy to a Word file. I have OCR'd the document into an RTF file and ended up with page after page of usually OK copy, that is easy enough to clean up if there are any OCR errors.



However at about the halfway mark I've suddenly encountered page after page of text that has occasionally has divided itself into weird columns. These are not tables, and the only way I've so far been able to get rid of them is to paste it all into a Notepad document, delete the information in the Word doc and re-paste it in (after cleaning it up in Notepad).

I've tried just copying it and pasting it as text into the document, but that is fairly useless and it often just seems to end up back in these columns.

I've tried highlighting the text and removing the formatting (Control + Spacebar) but that doesn't work either.

As per this attachment, above is the text that has had the formatting screwed up, and below is how it should be.

Any ideas on how to fix this would be gratefully received.

Updated: I have also attached a snip showing the format marks, and another showing how columns are screwing things up if I delete Section Breaks.

Attached Images

	Word doc problem.JPG (80.0 KB, 7 views)
	Word problem with break info.JPG (108.9 KB, 7 views)
	Word problem with column info.JPG (65.9 KB, 7 views)
	Word problem with column info2.JPG (83.4 KB, 7 views)

The section breaks indicate the shift into and out of multi-column format.


With a copy, try a replace, replacing ^b with nothing.

Thanks so much. I have deleted all the section breaks. However I do want to add some back, to divide one page from another. Each page ends with "/86" (without the quotes).

Is there a way to automate the process, so that I can now add back next page section breaks after those characters?

To divide one page from another you should be using page breaks, NOT section breaks. Section breaks add a whole level of complexity that should be avoided where possible.

A page break in the Find/Replace dialog is denoted as ^m

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

OCR can and often does result in Word documents that are very difficult to edit.
Ideally there are few, if any, manual page breaks in a document. Word expects text to simply flow from page to page.
See:

• Word Doesn't Know What a Page Is by Daiya Mitchell, MVP and
• Moving/Reorganizing Pages in Microsoft Word.

You can use styles and paragraph formatting to have pages divide logically.

• The Importance of Styles in Microsoft Word
• Keeping text on a single page with Word's Pagination features (a.k.a. Block Protect) by Deborah Savadra