Forum Discussion
Trying to get remove table formatting
I have a large document (9000 pages) I am working on. It has been OCR'd from original files.
Sometimes there are errant tables included. I've tried to find a way to remove the tables without affecting the words inside. I haven't found a way yet. I've tried a replace all, but there doesn't seem to be a special character that matches that circle thingy in the below image.
Any help gratefully received.
Noone_Important With the selection in the table, go to the Layout tab of the ribbon (the one to the right of Table Design), and click on "Convert to Text".
In the next dialog, select the character to be used to separate the text. If the first one that you select does not give the desired result, BEFORE doing anything else, click on Undo and then try a different character. Tabs will usually work best, but not always.
Noone_Important With the selection in the table, go to the Layout tab of the ribbon (the one to the right of Table Design), and click on "Convert to Text".
In the next dialog, select the character to be used to separate the text. If the first one that you select does not give the desired result, BEFORE doing anything else, click on Undo and then try a different character. Tabs will usually work best, but not always.
- Thanks for that! It seems to have worked. It's not perfect, but much better than it was.
It's possible that the table you're seeing is actually an image, not text. If that's the case, you can try using an image editing program to remove it.
If the table is actually text, you can try using a regular expression to remove it. For example, the following regular expression will remove all instances of the table in the image you provided:
To remove table formatting from your large document in Microsoft Word without affecting the words inside, you can use the "Find and Replace" feature with wildcard expressions. Here's a step-by-step guide:
Open Your Document: Open your document in Microsoft Word.
Enable Wildcards: Go to the "Home" tab, click on the "Replace" option in the "Editing" group. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl + H to open the "Find and Replace" dialog. Click on the "More >>" button to reveal additional options, and then check the "Use wildcards" box.
Find Tables: In the "Find what" field, enter the following wildcard expression to find tables:
cssCopy code^b<Table>^13^p</Table>^bThis expression looks for <Table> followed by a paragraph mark (^13) and any content up to </Table>. The ^b represents a section break, which is often found before and after tables in OCR'd documents.
Replace with Nothing: Leave the "Replace with" field blank.
Replace All: Click on "Replace All" to remove all instances of tables from your document.
Manually Check: After removing the tables, manually review your document to ensure that the words inside the tables were not affected and that the formatting is as desired.
Check Online: To verify the document for any remaining formatting issues, you can use the built-in spell check feature or other proofreading tools provided in Word. Go to the "Review" tab and click on "Spelling & Grammar" to check the document for any remaining inconsistencies.
Please note that this method assumes that your tables are structured with <Table> and </Table> tags. Adjustments may be needed if the tables have different formatting or if there are additional elements to consider.
Always make sure to create a backup of your document before making extensive changes, especially on a large document like yours.
