Often when you copy and paste certain texts from internet to office document and then click all the text and justify it(align text to both left and right side margins) it makes no difference at all, like you didn't click justify at all.



I was wondering:

1.Why this happens?
2.How can you fix this automatically instead of manually?
Obviously if you do it manually it is extremely time consuming, you would have to press delete on empty space to get the next line, then click on the end of the line, press delete again and so on, it is grueling beyond belief.

There must be an elegant way to do this instead of that...

P.S.
Also I was wondering if anyone knows of a freeware software that automatically merges multiple html pages into one and/or converts that page into text document?

Can you at least point me to a forum where I might find out the solution to this. Just tell me if this forum is dead?

When you copy and paste from one application to another, many unseen formatting commands are potentially pasted with your text. This can be particularly problematic when copying from the web to Word, because Word will respond to several formatting commands that don't necessarily show up in Word's formatting options (in other words, you can't easily change the formatting that gets carried over).

Word has a simple fix for this. After copying your text from the internet, toggle to Word. In the Home menu, click the down arrow beneath the paste icon (far left of the ribbon menu in 2007). Select "Paste Special." A Paste Special window appears. In that window, select unformatted text and okay. This will scrub your copied text of all formatting commands and bring in only the text. You can then format the pasted text normally.

That didn't work at all, I tried every kind of paste option.

Is your main problem extra line breaks? Are you copying from HTML pages or PDF pages. Some PDF scripting will insert hard line breaks where the original document had normal text wrapping, and I'm not sure how to get around that.

Hi Metamag,

Often, when you paste text into Word from web sites, email or PDFs, you'll get a paragraph break at the end of each line within a logical paragraph, and two such breaks between logical paragraphs. Such text stubbornly refuses to honour justification, because there's nothing to justify - it's all a series on one-line paragraphs. You should be able to see this if you have Word configured to display formatting marks on-screen. Clicking the ¶ symbol on the toolbar/home tab toggles this on/off.

You can fix this kind of paragraph formatting using a series of wildcard Find/Replace actions, with:
Find = [ ^s^t]{1,}^13
Replace = ^p
Find = ([!^13])([^13])([!^13])
Replace = \1 \3
Find = [ ]{2,}
Replace = ^32
Find = ([a-z])-[ ]{1,}([a-z])
Replace = \1\2
Find = [^13]{1,}
Replace = ^p
Note that the above assumes there are at least two such paragraph breaks between the 'real' paragraphs.

A macro equivalent is:
For PC macro installation & usage instructions, see: http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm
For Mac macro installation & usage instructions, see: http://word.mvps.org/Mac/InstallMacro.html

If you'd prefer to run the macro against just a selected range, change:
ActiveDocument
to:
Selection

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

I used just that part and it fixed everything perfectly! Thank you so much!

Can you tell me what's the rest of the stuff for if just those two lines worked?

I did create that macro you posted but when I ran it I got this-


Probably it would have gotten the job done anyway.

Oh, I'm still trying to find this so if anyone knows...

Hi Metamag,

See the comments in the macro itself.
That suggests your regional settings for Windows require that you change '{1,}' and '{2,}' in the code to '{1;}' and '{2;}'.

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

I have the same word wrap issues in that each line seems to be a paragraph. It seems very convoluted to use the macro. I have a simple genealogy program that word wraps just fine but it seems silly to copy things to that program to word wrap and then back into Word. Is there no easy way for those of us who do not understand macros?

All the macro does is to automate the series of Find/Replace operations described beforehand. No particular understanding of macro is required to use it, any more than you need to understand electronic ignitions and fuel injection to drive a modern car.

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

I think it would be wonderful to use the macro, but all I can find is how to record a macro. Is there a way to use an edit macro function, or new macro function, then copy the macro above and simply paste it?

Links to macro installation & usage instructions are below the code in post #6

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

i like to justify text to make a long word document looks good. The problem is that this macro when i run it,
changes the all format of the document. Because delete all break lines between text, even the headers of the text. I would like this makro to run, and delete lines, on the text of a document between two styles that im giving to that macro not all the document. Because in that way, combine together even the heading of the document. Is that such way to do that? Im sending you an word document, that you understand what i want to do. I would like to do the same thing the macro does but only between the styles i said to do, to whole document such as between text of heading 1 and heading 2 or heading 2 and heading 3 because if i choose to do this to a whole document gives me problems such as formating of the style of heading 1 to whole document. You can run this macro to the document to see what exact giving.

Attached Files

	This is the initial document.docx (13.7 KB, 28 views)
	Final document in format i want to do..docx (13.7 KB, 15 views)

Hi saints,

As indicated in post #6, if you want to clean up just a selected block of text, change:
ActiveDocument
to:
Selection

Trying to code a macro that could deal with every possible heading scenario, etc, is a complicated exercise that is probably not worth the effort.

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