inserting extra paragraph etc with find/replace

pachmarhi · Newbie Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 1

I regularly need to convert a newsletter I produce from OoWriter to Text for emailing. For the plain text version I need to insert an additional blank paragraph between each paragraph in the OOWriter formatted version. I have looked through the list of regular expressions but don't seem to be able to find anything to enable me to do this. Any suggestions?

Also is there any way of searching for text in a particular paragraph style and replacing it with the same text but in upper case?

Thanks

geoff80fg · OOo Advocate Joined: 26 Jul 2006 Posts: 420 Location: UK

Make sure Regular expressions is checked in the More options section then search for "$" and replace with "\n\n" (but don't include the quotes).

Investigate the Format options for your other requirement but be prepared for a bit of a struggle. Search & Replace is not the best loved feature of OOo.

Geoff

acknak · Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 8:10 am Post subject:

I suspect you will be far happier if you simply export (File > Save As) to plain text from Writer, then use a text editor or batch utilities to tweak the text. As Geoff already pointed out, Writer is not especially well suited for working with "plain text".

If you need more adventure in your life, you can try exporting from Writer as Docbook XML, which has converters to many other output formats, including plain text. In my quick test, this worked at first, then failed completely with a different document, so this may not be "ready for prime time".

Also, have you considered HTML for your email distribution? You can save directly as HTML from writer (although it sometimes uses some exotic HTML to try and mimic the typeset formatting) and you'd have a shot at more attractive presentation.

Finally, of the few newsletters I get by email, the form I most appreciate is an abbreviated HTML version that simply summarizes the contents and provides links to the full text version that I can then download if I want to read it. You could do this with plain text as well, as most mail clients these days will recognize hypertext links in a text message and make them clickable.