Find and replace hard returns

Every now and again we need to replace certain characters in Word using Find and Replace. Recently I wanted to sort a list of file names and APA references - which I had stashed in a Simplenote file - into alphanumeric order, in preparation for importing into my master articles spreadsheet. A number of my APA entries were different to the file name, for example:

Rotas-Palacio, C. M., & Abbas, R. (2023). Public Relations Committee with Cherry Rotas and Raza Abbas [Tuesday May 24] [video]. Asia Pacific Career Development Conference. https://asiapacificcda.vids.io/videos/709fdbb41f1ce2c3f9/645_public-relations-committee

APCDA - Rotas-Palacio & Abbas, Public Relations, 2023.mp4

I thought I would copy the list, and paste it into Word. But I knew if I sorted it in Word using paragraphs, I would end up with all my A's together at the top, and would have to scroll well down the page to find all the - in the case shown above - R entries.

If there weren't that many, it wouldn't be a problem. However, I had 200 entries that needed to go in my spreadsheet. I had left logging these articles WAY too long.

I knew that the Word code characters for a tab is "^t" (caret, t); and a hard return, or a paragraph, is "^p" (caret, p). I figured there must be code characters for a soft return. And there is: "^l" (caret, l; thank you McFadden, 2008).

All I needed to do was to use Word Find and Replace ^p for ^l on all my APCDA entries. I did that. The replace worked perfectly. My hard returns became soft returns, then I was able to sort all my data by Author name, the file names stayed with their APA entries (effectively in one paragraph), and I was able to import my sorted data. All 200 entries. 

Yay!

Sam

Reference:

McFadden, R. G. (2008, October 8). Is it possible to replace soft returns with hard returns?. https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/is-it-possible-to-replace-soft-returns-with-hard-returns.3641701/