Remove all section breaks in Word 2k Doc 3

[alr0]

Hi All,

I need to remove all section breaks in a Word doc and nothing seems to work. Selecting section breaks ^B in replace makes 0 replacements. I tried capturing it with ctrl C and nothing is captured.

Neither help nor the KB had much to offer. They can be manually deleted but there are 500 pages of this. If anyone knows how to remove all section breaks it would be very helpful.

Thnaks in advance,

alr

 

[SkipVought]

alr,

^b NOT ^B



Skip,
Skip@TheOfficeExperts.com

http://www.TheOfficeExperts.com

 

[alr0]

Hi Skip,

I'm sorry, I did use ^b, when selecting "special" from the replace dialogue box. It simply does no replacement individually or with replace all.

Thanks,

alr

 

[SkipVought]

Well thats EXACTLY how it works!

Do you have something selected and if so did you answer all the questions YES!?

Do you really have section breaks?

Skip,
Skip@TheOfficeExperts.com

http://www.TheOfficeExperts.com

 

[alr0]

I tried with nothing selected and with the entire doc selected, there was no difference. I never saw any questions to answer.

There is a pattern between pages, in the middle it says, "Section Break (Continuous)". I also tried changing the continuous to next page at page setup, layout tab, neither did any replacements.

It seems weird! Word will find them all when you choose "Find Next" but replace all does Zero replacements.

Hmmmm...

alr

 

[alr0]

Hi there,

The problem has been solved!!!

Though I have no idea how this happened, we had 500 section breaks to remove and the replace dialogue would find the breaks but would not do any replacements.

However, an enterprising fellow in the shop recorded a keystroke macro that finds the next section break and manually deletes it. This macro went through the entire 3.8 meg file (500 pages of labels) eliminating all section breaks. As a programmer I rarely use macros but this made it possible to import each cell with VBA as a record into an access table. No record separators made this last step necessary since converting to text left one ^P between fields and records. No identifiable record separators makes these files a nightmare that is bad for your eyes.

If anyone runs into this, I would be happy to help. This could save an enormous amount of time. If it was clear how the file got in this shape I could write an FAQ but it seems unlikely that this is common enough to clutter up that section. Any thoughts?

Thanks again to everyone that assisted in this effort.

Regards,

alr

 

[Crauck]

Hello,

I am having the same issue with Word documents, I am getting very frustrated because you'd think it would work using the Special find and replace. But it doesn't.

So I am verrrrry interested in how you accomplished this.

Thanx,

Cristy

 

[alr0]

Hi Christy,

I had posts on several boards including MS and drew a blank everywhere. One of my colleagues (a hardware tech) tried recording a keystroke macro ("Tools" menu "Macro&quot and then hit Alt-F8 to re-run the macro and it worked. Holding the key down, he went through 500 pages in less than a minute. "Done and Done"

If that does not do it, someone here also provided some code to go into a Word table and import each cell as a new record. This is required for a small percentage of files we receive with missing record markers. People were going through 100+ page text files and manually adding the missing returns.

Most of my coding is in VBA within Access or SQL Server but I found the Word objects very easy to use. If you have trouble finding the code on the board I will be happy to post a copy.

HTH,

al

 

[Crauck]

Hello again,

Thank you for responding so quick. I'm not sure how to get it to record deleting the break. It might seem tedious but could you walk me through the steps of recording the keystroke. Please.

If you would like to E-Mail me, my E-Mail address is:
cristy@cog-inc.com

Thanx again,

Cristy

 

[Crauck]

I'm sorry,
I recorded it and I didn't think it was working but it was. YEAH!!! So thank you, that way was pretty easy. I think I'll use that.

Thank You again for your quick response.

Cristy