Greetings,

Firstly, may I ask that before replying read this message all the way
through, thanks.

I have a situation where my telephone listing held as a Wordfile, has
become corrupted, I am not sure exactly when this occurred but it has bits
repeated, some with strange characters interspersed with the information
and about two thirds seem correct.

When I went to the States last year, I downloaded this along with all the
other files in the "my documents" hierarchy onto an external hard disk, to
date, I have not been able to retrieve this file which I believe to be
uncorrupted as I cannot get my machines correctly to "see" the external
hard disk in it's caddy.

Therefore, since I discovered this corruption only some couple or so weeks
after my return from the States, from that point on, any intended
modifications have been stored in a completely separate file.

What I wish to do is merge these files, removing the obvious bad sections
and then sorting the remaining lines so as to find duplicates and changes.
The problem is that many of the entries extend beyond a single line.  All
entries are separated by two hard returns which, as the file is over thirty
pages long, include soft page breaks.

I suspect what I need to do is find a way of saving the text into an ascii
file, such that every entry is forced onto a single line, so that then I
can perform the sort.

Of course, once the sort has been performed, the blanks will be forced to
the top of the file and there need to be reinserted.

I want a reliable way and to know the codes for which I issue find/replace,
so that soft returns and soft page breaks are replaced by space.

Please don't ask why the file is this way and say why didn't you do such
and such, it's a legacy file from the days of my good old Epson KeyNote of
1988 vintage.  I keep meaning to convert to some other format but just have
not as yet actioned my plan.

Thanks.


All the best

from:

Colin R. Howard.


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