Can you automate the deletion of extra spaces and the creation of indents?

[AntiqueFlaneur]

Is there any way to automate the deletion of extra spaces between paragraphs or the creation of indents in front of paragraphs? It would take me at all day to do it manually with this 300-page text file I've got to get into Publisher, and I'd love to find a shortcut. Whether it's something I can do inside Publisher or something I need to find externally, it would be worth my time. See attached file for the current situation. 

 

 

[v_kyr]

Try the find & replace panel for empty lines in paragraphs, search for two empty lines and replace with one etc. AFAI recall APub also can deal with regular expressions so should be easy to setup to match empty lines for both the find and replace part. - See also ...

• Removing line breaks?
• How to remove space between paragraphs?

• Removing extraneous carriage returns using "Find and Replace"?

• ... etc ... do a forum or Google search after that topic

[lepr]

Try this:

[sfriedberg]

@AntiqueFlaneurAre you already using text styles for the body paragraphs?  By selecting all the text and assigning a style, you can then change the properties on the style and it will automatically propagate to all the styled paragraphs.  So clean up any extraneous extra paragraph marks as has already been suggested.  Then control the inter-paragraph spacing and indenting in just one place, by editing the properties of one text style.

[AntiqueFlaneur]

3 hours ago, anon2 said:

Try this:

It appears that there is only one paragraph return between the lines (see attached), and yet there is a large space between the paragraphs. 

[AntiqueFlaneur]

1 hour ago, sfriedberg said:

@AntiqueFlaneurAre you already using text styles for the body paragraphs?  By selecting all the text and assigning a style, you can then change the properties on the style and it will automatically propagate to all the styled paragraphs.  So clean up any extraneous extra paragraph marks as has already been suggested.  Then control the inter-paragraph spacing and indenting in just one place, by editing the properties of one text style.

There are no extra paragraph marks as far as I can tell by turning on special characters. And I just looked at the paragraph styles inter-paragraph spacing and indenting and it seems like they are both set to zero. What am I missing?

[sfriedberg]

You want to assign a text style (Body is just fine) to all the paragraphs.  Then edit the properties of the text style.  Don't open the Paragraph tab that you show in that image.  Go to the Text Styles panel.  Select the particular style, right-click and choose Edit "Style Name".  In the dialog that appears, about half-way down the list on the left, choose Paragraph > Spacing.  The right side of the dialog will change to show you the available settings.  Most of them are probably [No Change] at the moment.

To get you started, set Space Before and Space After to 0 pts, and set First Line Indent to 0.25in. As you enter each field, you should see the text in the main view behind the dialog change in response.  All the paragraphs assigned that particular style will respond in unison, unless you have manually overridden the assigned style with Character or Paragraph properties.  The plus mark in "Body+" indicates the presence of some kind of override.

By the way, the Paragraph tab you show in that image has 12 points of space after each paragraph.

[AntiqueFlaneur]

@sfriedberg - I believe I've done what you've suggested by editing the body style dialogue. There are now indents, but the spaces are still there. 

[sfriedberg]

Can you share your afpub file by uploading it here as an attachment to a post?

[AntiqueFlaneur]

@sfriedberg - Thanks for offering to take a look and help me out. It is very appreciated. I'm attaching the file to this post.

 

FOFCLayout.afpub

[sfriedberg]

@AntiqueFlaneur There was an extraneous line break at the end of the first paragraph immediately before the paragraph break, and an extraneous paragraph break between the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.  Once I got rid of those, I selected all the text, most of which had the "normal" style applied, and (re)applied the "Body" text style. Voilà!

FOFCLayout_modified.afpub

[AntiqueFlaneur]

10 hours ago, sfriedberg said:

@AntiqueFlaneur There was an extraneous line break at the end of the first paragraph immediately before the paragraph break, and an extraneous paragraph break between the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.  Once I got rid of those, I selected all the text, most of which had the "normal" style applied, and (re)applied the "Body" text style. Voilà!

FOFCLayout_modified.afpub

Thanks so much! 

When you say, "I selected the text," is there some sort of "select all" function that covers not only the current text box, but all the linked text boxes so you don't have to go through page by page?

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, AntiqueFlaneur said:

Thanks so much! 

When you say, "I selected the text," is there some sort of "select all" function that covers not only the current text box, but all the linked text boxes so you don't have to go through page by page?

Put your text caret in the text and use Command + A to select all (probably Control + A on Widows)

[AntiqueFlaneur]

3 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Put your text caret in the text and use Command + A to select all (probably Control + A on Widows)

Thanks!

[Petar Petrenko]

1. Select all the text;
2. Open Paragraph panel;
3. Open the Spacing tab;
4. Inset 0 on all empty boxes.