Converting Plain Text Notes Into MS Word Bullet Lists

[tinker123]

I hate status reports. 

I found a way to live with it. 

While I am working in Visual Slickedit I keep a plain text file open in one of the buffer tabs.  As I finish things, I just jot down a quick note into that file.  At the end of the week that becomes my weekly status report.  Example entries:

The Datatables.net plugin runs very slowly in IE 8 with more than 2,000 records. I  changed the way I did the server side code to process the data to make less work for the  plugin to get decent performance for the IE 8 users.
   
I made a class to wrap data from the new data collection objects into the legacy data holder objects.  This will let the new database code be backward compatible with the legacy code until we can replace it.
   
I found the bug reported by Jane.  The software is fine.  The database we use for the test site has data that is corrupted in a way it wouldn't be for production site

At the end of the month I go back to each weekly *.txt file and paste all of the entries into a MS Word file for a monthly report.  I give the monthly report to a liason to the contracting company who has to compile everyone's monthly reports into a single MS Word 2007 document.   His problem, soon to be my problem, comes when he highlights my paragraphs like the ones above to put bullets in front of my paragraphs.

When he highlights my notes to put bullets in front of them with MS Word 2007, Word rearranges the text a bit and the new line chars/carriage returns stagger the text so the text is no longer in neat chunks.

This:

I found the bug reported by Jane.  The software is fine.  The database we use for the test site has data that is corrupted in a way it wouldn't be for production site

Becomes This:

I found the bug reported by Jane.  The software is fine.  The database we use for the test site has data that is corrupted in a way it

wouldn't

be for production site

I tried turning word wrap on in the text files I put my status notes in.  It just puts a newline character in anyway.  Searching/Replacing those chars in the text files has the result of destroying the paragraphs.

Once my notes are pasted into  MS Word, Word automatically translates them into paragraph breaks.  Searching/Replacing them there has similar results.  Blank  lines separating the notes disappears.  One big mess.

What I would like is to be able to keep adding my status notes to a text file as I am now, but do something different when I paste the notes into MS Word such that my liason can select the text, hit the bulleting command and NOT have the staggered text as shown above.

Any ideas?

Thanks much in advance

Steve

[Clark]

If I understand the problem correctly, you are getting extra new lines when you paste paragraphs of text.

I recommend using soft wrap (view>soft wrap). Makes sure to type paragraphs of text on a single line without pressing enter. don't add indent to soft wrapped lines either.

Hope this helps

[tinker123]

Thanks, it seems to work in Libre Office saving to MS Word 2007 docx.  The real test will be Monday when I get back to a Windows box and MS Word.

The soft wrap option seems to be leaving some special chars out that the regular word wrap does not.

Thanks again.

Steve