Removing multiple spaces in OpenOffice/LibreOffice

I recently received several documents that contained multiple (and irregular) numbers of spaces between each word.  When I asked the original author about this, they said that they typed out the document and that they struggle with the gap a space produces being too small.  As I was meant to extract the information out of these documents and use it in a report and create a spreadsheet out of these I wanted to get rid of the multiple spaces so that I wouldn't have to re-type the whole thing. 

Microsoft office offers several ways to do this, however many of them do not work with OpenOffice or LibreOffice.  This is such a simple problem, but there are not many solutions to this shown online.

A simple fix is to use the Find & Replace tool (Ctrl + H or edit > Find & Replace from the top menu).  This will bring up a window (shown below).  In the Search for field enter [:space:]+ (be sure to include the symbols) and then in the Replace With field put in a space.  Click on the + symbol beside Other Options and select Regular expressions ( a tick should appear in the box beside it.

 Click on Replace All and your document should now be sorted, all of the multiple spaces will be replaced by a single space.

I recently received several documents that contained multiple (and irregular) numbers of spaces between each word.  When I asked the original author about this, they said that they typed out the document and that they struggle with the gap a space produces being too small.  As I was meant to extract the information out of these documents and use it in a report and create a spreadsheet out of these I wanted to get rid of the multiple spaces so that I wouldn't have to re-type the whole thing. 

Microsoft office offers several ways to do this, however many of them do not work with OpenOffice or LibreOffice.  This is such a simple problem, but there are not many solutions to this shown online.

A simple fix is to use the Find & Replace tool (Ctrl + H or edit > Find & Replace from the top menu).  This will bring up a window (shown below).  In the Search for field enter [:space:]+ (be sure to include the symbols) and then in the Replace With field put in a space.  Click on the + symbol beside Other Options and select Regular expressions ( a tick should appear in the box beside it.

 Click on Replace All and your document should now be sorted, all of the multiple spaces will be replaced by a single space.

Removing multiple spaces in OpenOffice/LibreOffice

Open opt (and other documents) online

Recently I was on my works computer, where I have no autority to install anything, and left with urgently needing to open a document that I had saved on some of my online storage space. There was one slight problem: I had saved the odt version of my file to the cloud space and this PC runs windows XP and office 2003. This was a problem as I urgently needed the file and none of the computers at my workplace have anything other than windows XP and ofice 2003. My first thought was to try Google Docs, but they failed to open the odt file either.



But help was at hand in the form of a very handy website called View Docs Online this allowed me to view, print the file and convert it to a pdf file without the need of any account sign up or installation of software. Although you can view, at present it doesn't allow the user to edit the documents, but to be fair this is an online viewer, not an online word processor. It allows text to be selected and copied

There is a catch with this though: be wary over what you put on, make sure there is nothing that is confidential or important information. This is similar to posting on a url shortening service (like tinyurl or ur1.ca), once it is on there you are free to share the url with the rest of the world. But this can be turned into an advantage as it allows the users to share their documents with people on social networks (Diaspora, identi.ca, Frienica etc). It does allow you the option of deleting the document, but I am never convinced as to how effectively items are removed from a server, I prefer to have control and know that my information is safe.

It allows a 'sign in' feature via Facebook, this allows the user to sort their saved documents. But this is a shame that it must be through Facebook only, as not everybody can take advantage of this, a local account and login would also have been a nice option.

Recently I was on my works computer, where I have no autority to install anything, and left with urgently needing to open a document that I had saved on some of my online storage space. There was one slight problem: I had saved the odt version of my file to the cloud space and this PC runs windows XP and office 2003. This was a problem as I urgently needed the file and none of the computers at my workplace have anything other than windows XP and ofice 2003. My first thought was to try Google Docs, but they failed to open the odt file either.



But help was at hand in the form of a very handy website called View Docs Online this allowed me to view, print the file and convert it to a pdf file without the need of any account sign up or installation of software. Although you can view, at present it doesn't allow the user to edit the documents, but to be fair this is an online viewer, not an online word processor. It allows text to be selected and copied

There is a catch with this though: be wary over what you put on, make sure there is nothing that is confidential or important information. This is similar to posting on a url shortening service (like tinyurl or ur1.ca), once it is on there you are free to share the url with the rest of the world. But this can be turned into an advantage as it allows the users to share their documents with people on social networks (Diaspora, identi.ca, Frienica etc). It does allow you the option of deleting the document, but I am never convinced as to how effectively items are removed from a server, I prefer to have control and know that my information is safe.

It allows a 'sign in' feature via Facebook, this allows the user to sort their saved documents. But this is a shame that it must be through Facebook only, as not everybody can take advantage of this, a local account and login would also have been a nice option.

Open opt (and other documents) online