Pasted text comes in columns

[yotas312]

I copied a long text from the internet and it was pasted as a column of paragraphs, e.g :

"When people buy computers, they're

told they're getting a hard drive of


a certain size--80 gigabytes, perhaps.


But when they check the computer
they find only 74GB.

Where did the other 6GB go?"


I can easily fix it line by line but this takes too long since its 10 pages. I have tried paste special and single column formatting but the text lines just wont extend to the width of the document..Is there an automatic way of stretching text in word so that it reaches the end ?? Please Help...!!!

[jujuwillis]

You could do a find and replace for paragraph marks.

In the find dialog box put ^p (paragraph mark) and in the replace dialog box leave it blank. - These can be found under the special command button.

Word of warning - if you choose Replace All it will get rid of all the paragraph marks and you might be left with a one long paragraph.

To avoid this happening, first do a find and replace with: ^p^p in the find box and ^l^l (manual line break) in the replace box.

If this does what you want, then replace the ^l^l with ^p^p when you have got rid of all your underwanted paragraph marks.

[Stefan Blom]

See also http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/CleanWebText.htm.