How to convert selected text into single paragraph in Libreoffice?

Question

I'm using Libreoffice in Ubuntu 14.04 with unity.

What I have is a libreoffice writer file which looks like, say

The
quick

brown fox

jumps
over the lazy

dog

I would like to convert it into single paragraph, so that it looks like

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

How would I do this, with minimum efforts?

Answer 1

With Regular Expressions search enabled, search for $ and replace with a space. You may do another search/replace to reduce multiple spaces to one space.

Alternatively, you may first remove all empty paragraphs using a regex search for ^$, replacing it with "nothing" (empty string), and afterwards replace the paragraph marks by spaces as described.

Take care that this search/replace may affect the entire document - if you want to preserve some paragraph marks, you should first select the text to edit and restrict the search/replace to "current selection only" (option just above the regex option).

See also the OpenOffice documentation on search/replace using regular expressions - those explanations and advices often apply to LibreOffice, too.