On Tue, 25 Feb 2020 13:52:48 +0000
Tommy Skoglund <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi
> 
> Suddenly it is impossible to write any longer in my writer-document. Why? The 
> document has been longer earlier. 150 000 word. Its a novel, and very 
> important for me to fix the document. I have tried to copy latest 24 hours 
> text mass into earlyer version, but the there still seems to be a maximum 
> length, it stops and I can't write any longer. Seems to be some kind of 
> "coding" to make that happened. I can't "neutralize" my document and fix the 
> font etc again without ruining loads of bold and italic effects. So please 
> help me asap. I also tried to duplicate document, reinstall Open Office, my 
> Mac etc.
> 
> Regards
> Tommy

I regularly handle documents in OpenOffice of a million words and several 
thousand pages, so size is not a problem.

OpenOffice cannot handle paragraphs of longer than 64K characters; this amounts 
to about 15 US Letter/A4 pages.  If one marks paragraph by pressing Enter at 
the end of each paragraph that situation does not arise, but if one, as a habit 
from older word processors, marks paragraphs by Ctrl Enter, then one can 
quickly reach such a limit.  Turning on /View /Non printing characters (a 
toggle command) will show paragraphs terminated by a backwards P character 
(recte: a Pilcrow); if Ctrl Enter has been used, the paragraph marker will be a 
left pointing hooked arrow. 

The fix is simple: on a _COPY_ of your file (in case of disaster), open Find 
and Replace.  In Find box enter \n, in Replace box enter \n (different meanings 
in each box).  Drop More options and select "Regular expressions".  Press 
Replace all.  That should fix the problem, and to prevent it happening in 
future, only mark paragraphs by pressing Enter.

If that doesn't fix your file, you have the unaltered original to return to.

-- 
Rory O'Farrell <[email protected]>

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