Deleting large parts of text from a HUGE document.

2011-12-22 10:00:01

#1

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

So I have this document, over 700 pages long. It was over 800, but then I put the font size down (wow, lost a whole 100 pages...

I need a way of removing a recurring portion of text.

this:

Number: +------------
Name:
Subject: -------------------------------
Date: 18/12/2010 00:07:57
Folder: Outbox

(obviously removed the number and subject)

I tried recording a macro to select and cut the text, but when I run it nothing happens.

Using open office btw.

Any thoughts?

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:03:38

#2

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

oh and there's over 3 and a half thousand occurrences.

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:05:12

#3

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

find and replace seems to be working

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:10:32

#4

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

wait, no, not working well.

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:17:22

#5

KEN-JENNINGS: I am all that is MOD!; +2,973|6628|949

Is it in excel or word?

2011-12-22 10:18:17

#6

RTHKI: mmmf mmmf mmmf; +1,736|6733|Oxferd Ohire

open office

2011-12-22 10:19:02

#7

KEN-JENNINGS: I am all that is MOD!; +2,973|6628|949

Yeah, open office equivalent of word or excel

2011-12-22 10:19:31

#8

pirana6: Go Cougs!; +682|6287|Washington St.

Camm wrote:
find and replace seems to be working

I was gonna say this.
You might have to do it 5 times for each line though. And it'll only work if you don't want to keep instances of a similar line.

2011-12-22 10:20:44

#9

KEN-JENNINGS: I am all that is MOD!; +2,973|6628|949

Is it the same recurring string of text? What are you trying to replace it with. You can ignore my previous question, as I realize it would be pretty stupid to have 700 pages of text in an excel file

2011-12-22 10:26:36

#10

jsnipy: ...; +3,276|6518|...

notepad++, replace in files, regular exp if needed

2011-12-22 10:33:53

#11

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

jsnipy wrote:
notepad++, replace in files, regular exp if needed

can you expand on that?

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:34:38

#12

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

I'm using find and replace to replace the recurring words.

Date
Subject
Number etc

But, it's leaving white space all over the place, if I got rid of some of the white space it would be a good bit shorter.

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:35:37

#13

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:
Is it the same recurring string of text? What are you trying to replace it with. You can ignore my previous question, as I realize it would be pretty stupid to have 700 pages of text in an excel file

I'm just trying to delete that entire string. But now I realise that the date/time line is always changing.

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:37:20

#14

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

changed the autocorrect option to remove blank paragraphs.

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:40:17

#15

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

that seemed to get rid of the white space anywya, down to 500 pages.

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:40:51

#16

Microwave: _; +515|6651|Loughborough Uni / Leeds, UK

Code A Java Program!

Dammit, lost the emphasis of all caps

Last edited by Microwave (2011-12-22 10:41:05)

2011-12-22 10:41:57

#17

Finray: Hup! Dos, Tres, Cuatro; +2,629|5784|Catherine Black

protip james: do this

Code:

CODE A JAVA PROGRAM[b][/b]

2011-12-22 10:41:59

#18

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

Microwave wrote:
Code A Java Program!

Dammit, lost the emphasis of all caps

I probably could, buuuuut, I really can't be arsed digging out my java book right now. Plus, I've got it kinda ok. Just don't think I'll be able to get it down to any less pages than it's now at. And I don't think anywhere will be happy with me printing 500 pages.

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:44:13

#19

pirana6: Go Cougs!; +682|6287|Washington St.

Camm wrote:
I'm using find and replace to replace the recurring words.

Date
Subject
Number etc

But, it's leaving white space all over the place, if I got rid of some of the white space it would be a good bit shorter.

If you use f&r for each of the 5 lines and put the find to 'Number:' then another one for 'Date:' (or whatever the first part of each one that reoccurs each time is and doesn't change like the date will) then it should work slowly but well. This only works if you don't want to keep any 'Number:' 's that occur elsewhere in the file.

2011-12-22 10:45:09

#20

twoblacklines: all grown up now (its boring); +49|6203

Find and replace, in the replace box just leave a single space with the spacebar.

2011-12-22 10:47:28

#21

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

pirana6 wrote:
Camm wrote:
I'm using find and replace to replace the recurring words.

Date
Subject
Number etc

But, it's leaving white space all over the place, if I got rid of some of the white space it would be a good bit shorter.
If you use f&r for each of the 5 lines and put the find to 'Number:' then another one for 'Date:' (or whatever the first part of each one that reoccurs each time is and doesn't change like the date will) then it should work slowly but well. This only works if you don't want to keep any 'Number:' 's that occur elsewhere in the file.

the number is the same for every instance. I've got rid of that.

I need to get rid of the date but I would have to

Find - date
replace - (with nothing, obviously)

that would get rid of the word date.

To get rid of the actualy data for the date, I would need to go through every single text and delete the date/time.

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 10:49:25

#22

jsnipy: ...; +3,276|6518|...

Camm wrote:
jsnipy wrote:
notepad++, replace in files, regular exp if needed
can you expand on that?

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

An option called "find in files" that takes a directory, it will replace what you tell it. In your case you want to replace contents with nothing (leave replace with blank). Unlike opening the document in a program it will stream through the documents in a directory (not loading the whole thing in memory).

You can also use 'regular expression' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression) instead of a straight value.

Anything else is a waste of time.

2011-12-22 10:49:53

#23

Microwave: _; +515|6651|Loughborough Uni / Leeds, UK

As jsnipy said, you should be able to do it with a regex and Notepad++

2011-12-22 10:55:46

#24

Camm: Feeding the Cats.; +761|4964|Dundee, Scotland.

jsnipy wrote:
Camm wrote:
jsnipy wrote:
notepad++, replace in files, regular exp if needed
can you expand on that?
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

An option called "find in files" that takes a directory, it will replace what you tell it. In your case you want to replace contents with nothing (leave replace with blank). Unlike opening the document in a program it will stream through the documents in a directory (not loading the whole thing in memory).

You can also use 'regular expression' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression) instead of a straight value.

Anything else is a waste of time.

thanks for the help, but that still doesn't help the problem with the date/time string

for a fatty you're a serious intellectual lightweight.

2011-12-22 11:16:00

#25

jsnipy: ...; +3,276|6518|...

why not?

BF2S Forums Deleting large parts of text from a HUGE document.

Camm wrote:

jsnipy wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Code:

Microwave wrote:

Camm wrote:

pirana6 wrote:

Camm wrote:

Camm wrote:

jsnipy wrote:

jsnipy wrote:

Camm wrote:

jsnipy wrote:

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