It's a long time since I worked Office 2002! Basically with 300 pages this could take time and isn't ideal. First of all make a backup copy of the file and use that to try the alternatives.

The basic choice is to either manually remove those line breaks OR to remove all the line breaks en bloc. So we'll try the latter first working on your copy. Open Word and use the CTRL + H key combination to open Find/Replace. At the bootom of the dialog box there should be an advanced link. Try that - we are looking for the "Special" option which gives the option to replace (or Remove) the Paragraph Character. We want Word to remove them selectively and replace with a space.

Sorry this is a bit vaugue! Having got the paragraph symbol in the Find Box simply put a space in the Replace box. Now you want to click on the Find Next button and Word should skip to it - then choose Replace of Find Next again if you don't want to remove that particular paragraph character.

You could try clicking the replce all button but this will do just that and you will have all the text in one massive block and have to go through the whole document to put paragraphs back in again. That's why I've suggested making a backup copy of the document to work on.

Tip: The Underlined Character such as the "R" on Replace or "N" maybe "F" on Find Next is a shortcut key. Pressing the underlined character is the same as clicking the button - you may find that quicker than clicking your way through the document. In any event it will take time.

Just work out which option is going to work for you and podt back with any problems.

SweetPotato72,

You will probably find that all the proper new paragraphs in your document are two carriage returns while the new line ones are just one carriage return.

If you find and replace all the double carriage returns by a character that doesn't appear in your document, say ##### (a string of 5 hash characters) before you replace all the single carriage returns by a space, then you can find and replace the ##### by a carriage return, thereby putting all the proper paragraphs back in place.

Peter.

Peter and Taff - I think that you are referring to soft returns as opposed to the normal hard return.