when converting .txt doc to Word

I think you are using Word on macOS, but receiving text files from Windows users. That means that your text documents have multiple carriage-return/line-feed pairs, or a series of carriage-returns at the end of the lines that show ☐.

Paragraphs and line breaks in Word on Mac should end in just line feeds, so you may have success with this simple Find and Replace that removes all carriage return characters and leaves one line feed where that box appeared.

I just created some of the CR/LF text, opened it in Word, saw the ☐ character, and when I applied the above Replace all, the formatting remained the same, but that box disappeared.

Tested: Word 16.95 (Office 2021 for Mac Home & Business) on macOS Sequoia 15.3.2.

You can create a new Word Visual Basic (VBA) macro that does what the Find/Replace does by opening your text file in Word and then from the Tools menu > Macros > Macros… panel, select the ScrubCarriageReturns macro name and click Run. That immediately removes all carriage returns in the same manner as the Find/Replace sequence I showed earlier.

To create that Visual Basic Macro, click on the Developer menu item above the ribbon bar. That will show the following ribbon where you click Macros.

That will display this panel where you enter the Macro name exactly as I have entered it.

Click the Edit button, and below the Sub ScrubCarriageReturns() line, enter a blank line and then copy/paste the following VBA code below it.

With ActiveDocument.Range
With .Find
.Text = "^p"
.Replacement.Text = "^p"
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
End With
End Sub

Now, visit the Word menu and click Save Normal. That saves this VBA macro in your Normal template so you can access it from the Tools menu with this and future documents. Close the Macro Editor window.

Then, for each document that you open that has those CR box symbols in it:

Word > Tools > Macro > Macros and select ScrubCarriageReturns and then click Run. All of the CR boxes will disappear from your open document.

sallyshamby wrote:

I don't have Microsoft email or account so they won't help me. And there is no live people on phone call, just sends you to website which I can't get in.

You don’t need a Microsoft email address.

You can sign up for a Microsoft account with whatever email you want to use.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/kb/gettingstarted/how-do-i-register/1058695

That’s the home for support of the particular third-party app you’re using.

One of the important things that I omitted is that the MS Word Developer menu and Ribbon bar are switched on from Word > Preferences > View > ☑︎ Show developer tab. That same panel allows you to toggle the appearance of Paragraph marks too.

When you first open the document in Word (e.g. 16.95), you will see this in the left panel (I am in dark mode, but it may not be in yours):

Just click the magnifying glass icon and that presents your Find/Replace panel that I showed in my previous post in this thread.

You are welcome.

sallyshamby wrote:

All of a sudden when converting my .txt files from my clients to Word, the Word print is very tiny and there's tiny little squares at the end of each line. This started happening yesterday. Already reloaded software and it's still there.

Word is not an Apple product. You may get a faster response in the Microsoft Word Help Community.

sallyshamby wrote:

I don't have Microsoft email or account so they won't help me. And there is no live people on phone call, just sends you to website which I can't get in.

If you bought their software, you are their customer. Also, like Apple, Microsoft has user forums. I'm sure you'll find many knowledgeable people there.

Text documents created on Windows will have the carriage-return/line-feed characters and text documents created on macOS will correctly have just the line feeds for paragraph marks.

I preferred to give you options of fixing this in the document after opening in Word, though there are steps one can take in the macOS Terminal application to remove the carriage returns from any text document before opening in MS Word.

See here:

Find and Replace (Microsoft)

Note that I was able to find this information by going to my favorite search engine and putting in "find and replace word mac" as the search term.