Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2019 December 28

= December 28 =

Word - AutoFormat - Leave the spacing alone
I have turned off MS Word AutoFormat As I Type, primarily because I am doing a lot of Wikipedia editing, for which I want apostrophes to be apostrophes that mark italics or bold, and so I don't want them turned into smart quotes. So that means that I am using Word AutoFormat on paragraphs or whole documents after I compose them to send as email. So this has to do with making the Word AutoFormat command behave the way I want it to behave. One annoyance is that if I put in two consecutive CRLFs to force double-space between paragraphs, AutoFormat changes them to one CRLF. Maybe it thinks that I can use Format Paragraph instead. I know that I can. I just don't want to do that. So how do I tell AutoFormat that I only want it to clean up the quotes, and not clean up the spacing? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:36, 28 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Is there any reason why you do not simply work in the Wikipedia edit box? If you want to do more complex operations I suggest you work in a plain text editor such as Notepad. Doubtless there are workarounds, but MS Word is not really suitable for plain text editing.--Shantavira|feed me 11:11, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
 * User:Shantavira - There are two related reasons I do not work in the Wikipedia edit box. First, sometimes I want to take time to compose my reply, especially if it is long, and to save the intermediate work.  It isn't a matter of "complex"ity, but there are reasons to save the intermediate work.  Second, working in the Wikipedia text box results in edit conflicts.  Perhaps there is a right way to deal with edit conflicts that has been written up somewhere (and I would like to view it), but edit conflicts are a nuisance, and it is often more satisfactory not to risk them.  Robert McClenon (talk) 15:51, 29 December 2019 (UTC)


 * If you were running Linux then I could probably trawl around a few minutes and come up with quite a few dedicated editor plugins (such as for VIM and Emacs) that would be custom-made for MediaWiki editing. For Windows I am not so sure. But perhaps someone has created a shareware program that generates wikitext. I agree that MS Word is a sledgehammer for hitting a fly. Elizium23 (talk) 13:08, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Does anyone know how to get Word AutoFormat to leave the spacing alone? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:51, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Robert McClenon Have you tried Microsoft's WordPad? Elizium23 FYI there are both command line and graphical versions of VIM available for Windows. Vivafelis (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)


 * My very old version of Word has the option not to replace straight quotes with smart quotes, and doesn't change the line spacing, but I've had to fight with Microsoft over the years to retain it when they insist on upgrading. I use Notepad++ for text editing of Wikitext.  If I've used a Wikipedia edit box and have taken a long time to edit, I don't try to publish at the end, but copy the whole text and paste it into a new edit if an edit conflict is likely.   Dbfirs  12:46, 30 December 2019 (UTC)


 * When does this happen, instantly when you type in two Enters or when you paste text containing empty rows into new Word document or something third? Which verion of Word are you using? 93.136.90.120 (talk) 19:02, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Never mind I see what you're doing. Frankly I've been using Word since Office 95 and didn't know that was a feature until 5 minutes ago. I've experimented a little with the options and I couldn't find a way to disable the removal of empty paragraphs. I think you should ask this question on the MS official support forum. 93.136.90.120 (talk) 19:12, 31 December 2019 (UTC)