Using MS Word to quick-reformat text

[steven522]

Don't know if this will be helpful to you unless you have a version of MS Word.

I had several plain text files with lots of short stories in them that had been force-formatted to a max of 60 characters across with CRLF terminations. Looking at these on the jetbook made for an interesting read.

Connecting the jetbook to the PC directly, I edited the files on the SD card from with in Word to remove the extra "enters" on each line. Luckily, the original creator had followed each paragraph with a double "enter" to leave a blank line in-between.

I setup a macro within Word to do the following:
- Search for every paragraph/"enter" (in Word represented as "^p") within the file and replace with a space.
- Search for every double-space, which would be the "enter"-"enter" between paragraphs, and replace with the same "enter"-"enter" ("^p^p" within Word).

With this, I was able to load the file, launch the macro (button or key combo), and then save the file. Took about 5 seconds per file total. I went through the entire folder in few minutes.


Macro code is below for any cut-and-paste'ers out there:

Removed old code for newer code directly below

[steven522]

Made an improvement to handle some formats that use spaces instead of tabs to indent that was causing issues with some file conversions.

Option Explicit
Sub ReformatText()
    ' ReformatText Macro
    
    '  Replace all CRLF (paragraph) with "~~" marker
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "^p"
        .Replacement.Text = "~~"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    
    '  Replace all double "~~" markers with a double
    '  CRLF (paragraph) format code
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "~~~~"
        .Replacement.Text = "^p^p"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    
    '  Replace all remaining "~~" markers with a space
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "~~"
        .Replacement.Text = " "
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    
End Sub