[rogbar]

Sometimes when I paste a block of copy into an OOP outline, some lines are long, some are short, because the line breaks from the original document are carried in to the OOP outline.

Is there some efficient way I can strip those line breaks out without having to manually delete each one?

[whpalmer4]

Yes, there is! In fact, you told me about it :-)

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthre...t=line+endings

Once you've got the WordService package installed, just select a row containing the offending line endings and do Services->Format->Remove Line Endings -- doesn't that do what you want?

[rogbar]

It's not working now - maybe Snow Leopard's new Services doesn't like this old service, but when I highlight an item with a line break in it, and invoke the old "Remove Line Endings", it leaves the text of that item intact, copies the text and pastes it without the line break into a new item. Weird.

[whpalmer4]

I've seen the behavior you mentioned before, but can't remember if it was under Snow Leopard or not (I run Tiger most of the time). However, I installed WordService 2.7 on my SL disk just now, and it seems to work properly...

[whpalmer4]

Ah, figured it out -- what behavior you get depends on whether or not you are editing the row when you invoke the service. If you have the row open for editing, it will put the result back in place. If you have selected the row by clicking on the row handle, it will paste the result into a new row following (including an ascii rendition of the checkbox if you had one).

[rogbar]

Hmm. Not for me. I get the same 2nd line whether the 1st line is selected for editing, or selected by clicking on the row handle.

[whpalmer4]

I don't know what to suggest -- I tried it just now on 3 different machines with 10.4.11, 10.5.8, and 10.6.2 and they all worked as I described.

[rogbar]

Okay, now I see what you're saying. If I simply put a cursor into the item, it doesn't do it right. But if I select all the text manually then it does.

Thanks.

[whpalmer4]

Right, it pastes back into the text selection if there is one, otherwise it creates a new row.

[BoC]

Originally Posted by rogbar

Is there some efficient way I can strip those <pasted in> line breaks out without having to manually delete each one?

Totally Different, but quick fantastic time-saving method:

First paste the text into BBEdit or their FREE TextWrangler product (which is just fine for non-programmers).

Second chose a search replace that finds Returns and puts in a Space instead, or if there is a Return and Space, or if there is a Return and Space, replace with a single Space.

Third with many paragraphs: Turn 2 Returns into a special character, say a check mark, fix line returns as before, and then replace the check mark with 2 returns).

TextWrangler can also take text from web pages and let you clean it up and format with appropriate tabbed structure so you can take 100 pages of text and format it in a minute so you can paste it into Omni Outliner as a fully outline formated document. This can literally allow you to do in minutes what would take you hundreds of hours manually, and it takes only a little learning of their GREP Search & Replace functions. Once you are hooked, you will never be without it.

These techniques with a FREE PROGRAM can save you untold hours of work.

www.bbedit.com (no I don't work for them, just used their product, along with OO for what seems like forever).