How do I remove manual line breaks from a selected text?

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Level 1

9 points

How do I remove manual line breaks from a selected text?

I've been sent a large amount of text through an email. When I cut and paste it into Pages, all of the line breaks that were in the email are now part of my document. Is there a simple way in Page to select a paragraph and have it remove the line breaks and make it a single paragraph again? What I'd like is a simple drop down menu or script. Anyone know of a simple way to do this?

MacPro 3.0 Gigz, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Oct 10, 2007 5:30 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Paul Conaway

Level 4

2,115 points

Oct 10, 2007 6:39 PM in response to John Morton

John, here is what I do. First from the view icon in the toolbar (first one on the left) I choose the option. Show invisibles. Next highlight the line break character and copy it to the clipboard (command-c). Now open up the find and replace tool Command-F in the find textbox paste the line break character. Now in the replace but a space and then do a find and replace all and that should fix your problem.

HTH
Paul

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Answer 2

John Morton Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 10, 2007 7:02 PM in response to Paul Conaway

Thanks, Paul. That does work. I was hoping for a process with fewer steps. I was looking through some other programs I have on my machine and TextMate had something that fit my need exactly called "Unwrap Selection". TextMate is a program coders would probably be much more likely to have than writers but it ended up having the feature I wanted.

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Answer 3

John Morton Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 11, 2007 4:24 AM in response to Peggy

Peggy, that's perfect! I actually installed this WordService based on another post you made when I was asking about changing the case of text. I didn't think about looking in that menu for the solution to this new problem. Thank you, twice.

-John

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Answer 4

Peggy

Level 8

41,847 points

Oct 11, 2007 10:03 AM in response to John Morton

You're very welcome. I can't remember who first directed my to Devon Technologies shortly after iWork '05 came out & I wanted to change the case of text.

You'll notice in my screenshot that all of the choices in the Format submenu are greyed out. That's because I didn't have any text selected & OS X is smart enough to not give options that are not available.

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Answer 5

Peggy

Level 8

41,847 points

Oct 10, 2007 8:59 PM in response to John Morton

I use WordService from Devon Technologies. It's a one-step (maybe one & a half) process.

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Answer 6

Oct 10, 2007 7:26 PM in response to John Morton

I have textmate also. I like the program.

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