Removing Line Breaks?

[Denny]

I’ve imported a pdf from an InDesign project  and as I clean up the document to re-link text boxes lost in import, one problem I see is that I now have line breaks that I  don’t want based on the import of columns. Is there a way to remove the line breaks so that my text will reflow properly?

[Seneca]

45 minutes ago, Denny said:

 Is there a way to remove the line breaks so that my text will reflow properly?

Two points.

1. If you have an inDesign document you don't have to PDF it firs and then open it in Publisher. You should be able to just copy the text in inDesign and paste it into the Text frame in Publisher. This operation brings with it all the text as well as all the styles, which is nice.

2. With the latest Publisher beta you can now use GREP to search for carriage returns and swamp then with a space.

[Denny]

Ah, The grep is what I was looking for. Thanks.

That said,  my interest in this was to import from pdf to test how well that works. I’d like to be able to dump InDesign and switch to Publisher. Assuming a future when I don’t have access to InDesign I want to get an idea about what it might be like to start with an import of a pdf from a previous project that needs to be updated. Hoping Serif will at import of IDML at some point because while importing a pdf seemed great at first any attempt to actually do anything with the new Publisher file was met with an awareness of all of the little changes.

I did also try copy pasting the text from InDesign (even though I won’t have that in the future) just to see how it would go and as you said, it kept all my styles. Nice.

[Seneca]

2 hours ago, Denny said:

Hoping Serif will at import of IDML at some

As far as I know they are working on it but because Publisher hasn't reached the feature complete stage yet it's hard to guest when this will happen and whether it's going to be available at launch or a bit later.

[jmwellborn]

On 3/13/2019 at 10:04 AM, Seneca said:

 

2. With the latest Publisher beta you can now use GREP to search for carriage returns and swamp then with a space.

I would be very glad to know how you do this.   Based on the information in this thread, I have been trying without success to import a PDF directly into Publisher, and then get rid of each paragraph mark which appears at the end of each line and replace it with a space.    Doesn't work.    Previously, I have imported a PDF, saved it as an .afpub file, then opened that file and hand-removed every single paragraph marker.   Ver'r'r'r'r'r'ry slow work, but it does make the text workable.    If you import the PDF as editable text, you get every single line of the document as a single text frame.   Not desirable.   Got to be an easier way!!  

[walt.farrell]

26 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

If you import the PDF as editable text, you get every single line of the document as a single text frame.

Are you perhaps forgetting to set this option when you Open the PDF?

If that's not it, can you provide a sample PDF that has the problem? I don't (usually) have that issue.

[walt.farrell]

29 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

I have been trying without success to import a PDF directly into Publisher, and then get rid of each paragraph mark which appears at the end of each line and replace it with a space.    Doesn't work.

This works for me (not a regex search, just a normal one). The Paragraph mark came from the pulldown, and there's a space in the Replace field:

[jmwellborn]

19 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

This works for me (not a regex search, just a normal one). The Paragraph mark came from the pulldown, and there's a space in the Replace field:

Thank you, Walt, but there is a slight difference, at least on my MAC.  If you check both boxes, "Import as Editable Text" and  "Group lines of text into text frames" you will actually get an imported PDF without the paragraph breaks at the end of each line.  You will instead get a Line Break (Shift+Return) at the end of each line.    You then have to click on the Find box and enter Line Break and then go to the  "Replace With" section until it is highlighted in blue, then click once on the space bar.  Nothing will show up there but when you then click on FIND it will show you all of the lines with the line breaks.   Then hit Replace All.   At that point, you will get a nice document with all of the line breaks removed, but a different issue.   For the space between sentences I get a  blue >> symbol with spaces before and after.  (This represents the double clicks which I use AS A PERSONAL PREFERENCE, between sentences.)   So then I have to do the find and replace thing again, this time cutting and pasting the blue >> symbol into the Find box and then going to the Replace with box and use the spacebar again but this time spacing twice.   With that Find and Replace All done, the text is available for editing in Publisher, except for linking text frames.   Even so, this is a very nice way to work from an InDesign PDF straight into Publisher.

 

On 3/13/2019 at 9:17 AM, Denny said:

I’ve imported a pdf from an InDesign project  and as I clean up the document to re-link text boxes lost in import, one problem I see is that I now have line breaks that I  don’t want based on the import of columns. Is there a way to remove the line breaks so that my text will reflow properly?

Hope this helps a little bit.  I was hugely confused at first by not being able to actually find a "Space" command in the "Replace with" box.