How to remove bullets on blank lines?

I frequently receive documents which were created in Word and my MacBook Pro converts them to

Pages documents.


I then need to edit them, and sometimes create bulleted lists.


However, if I select several lines with paragraphs in between, and then

use Format to add bullets, the blank lines between the paragraphs

also receive a bullet. i.e. Pages does not recognise that there is no

text on these lines. It treats them as though they had text.


So far the only way I've found to remove the bullets from the blank lines, is to delete them manually, one by one.


Is there no way to create a list from a group of paragraphs, without having the blank lines

between the typed lines receiving a bullet too?


I know I could do this within Pages by not typing paragraphs between the lines and then formatting

a list with bullets. However, this option isn't possible when the document has already been formatted with paragraphs before conversion to Pages.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), macOS Sierra (10.12.3)

Posted on Mar 21, 2017 6:37 PM

Reply
4 replies

Mar 21, 2017 7:14 PM in response to FreudSydney

Hi FS,


Pages adds a bullet to lines in a list that follow a paragraph break (carriage return) It does not add a bullet to the new line following a line feed character (typed as shift-return). When importing document from other file formats, it follows the same rules.


If you have access to the originals, you could try replacing the returns with line feeds in those before saving. Once the document is in Pages, you might be able to use Find replace to find pairs of returns and replace them with a line feed followed by a return.


Using an AppleScript may also be possible for this process.


Regards,

Barry

Mar 21, 2017 8:26 PM in response to FreudSydney

"…don't reduce the amount of manual work…"


Possibly true. That would depend on whether a Replace All... would create problems. Replace all would replace all return-return instances with return-line feed. Whether there would be any ill effects would depend on the document.


A script might be able to introduce more discretion into the replacement, but script writing is beyond my (current) ken, so I'll leave it to one of the scripters who attend this community.


Regards,

Barry

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How to remove bullets on blank lines?

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