[DNSB]

Originally Posted by TheoHobbes

You do not need to use Calibre, Sigil, Latex, CSS, or rock, paper, and scissors to fix this.

Spoiler:

Create your Word file as usual. Don't add extra styles.

Open InDesign. Place your file.

Edit -> Find/Change

Find What: ^p^p
Change To: ^S^p

Empty lines are defined by two para breaks. This replaces one with a non-breaking space.

Problem solved.

This works on single blank lines between paragraphs. If you have more than one blank line (I use one line all the time, but you probably shouldn't use more) it removes half of them.

The solution to is to add a new style - maybe called Body Space.

In Find/Change -

Find Format:
[Select your original paragraph style]

Change Format:
[Select your new spaced style]

You can now set the before/after spacing on Body Space to whatever you want - with the caveat that Body Space is applied to the last line of text, not to the spaces.

You can also search for some other number of para breaks - ^p^p^p^p etc - and handle them as you like.

If you click the @s next to the Find/Change boxes you can enter any sequence of special/hidden characters and transform it how you want.

You did notice that this thread was started in 2009 and the last post before your post was in July 2020?

Necroposting is generally a lousy idea.