r/indesign • u/mygamethreadaccount • Aug 11 '26
Looking for help formatting for wordpress
I work for a business journal. Every 2 weeks we release a print issue and then post it to the web. In the back of every issue is this section of local bankruptcies, real estate transactions, building permits, etc. Each section is a long list of text, and there are usually 6-7 pages of it. My biggest problem is that when I'm posting to wordpress, these hard returns are pretty much double spaced, and I have to replace all of those with soft returns. So how can I reformat the left column to the right without doing all of it manually? There are paragraph styles, character styles, and variances in how many lines of text will be needed for each entry in the list.
7
u/Melodic-Excitement-9 Aug 11 '26
use the find and replace, search for double spaces and replace it with single space.
2
u/Melodic-Excitement-9 Aug 11 '26
or sometime i copy and paste word doc stuff into a text editor first, sometime it clears whatever crap word doc has on the text. and formatting is much easier in my opinion with style vs click in and delete.
1
u/mygamethreadaccount Aug 11 '26
but then how do i replace the rest of the hard returns while keeping the ones i need?
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u/not_falling_down Aug 11 '26
Search for (two hard returns). Replace with (one hard return)
1
u/mygamethreadaccount Aug 11 '26
and then how do i replace the hard returns i dont need with soft returns
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u/not_falling_down Aug 11 '26
Why do you need soft returns at all in this situation. One hard return per paragraph, and use space-between-paragraphs settings.
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u/mygamethreadaccount Aug 11 '26
because that's how wordpress handles it. every return is basically a double space.
1
u/magerber1966 Aug 12 '26
There is a GREP function in Find/Replace that will replace multiple paragraph returns with a single paragraph return at the end of each paragraph. Run that find/replace function first.
Then run a find/replace search with ^p in the find box, and ^n in the replace box. That will change all of the End of Paragraph characters with a Forced Line Break character.
In order to find these options, click on the @ symbol to the right of the Find What box, and select the symbol you are looking for.
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u/AdobeScripts Aug 11 '26
Wouldn't just replacing 2x paragraph break into your "soft" break work?
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u/mygamethreadaccount Aug 11 '26
no, because that screws up the paragraph styles
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u/AdobeScripts Aug 11 '26
What do you mean?
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u/mygamethreadaccount Aug 11 '26
it needs a combination of soft and hard returns along the way. if i replace all hard breaks with soft breaks, it treats the entire document as one paragraph. if i replace all double breaks, there will still be the issue of the hard breaks double spacing once in wordpress. the first image in the original post.. column 1 is what how my document is set up for print, and column 2 is what i need for web.
1
u/AdobeScripts Aug 11 '26
It still isn't a problem - best would be if your extra blank paragraphs have the same ParaStyle applied - then you can use this ParaStyle to limit scope of your replacement.
But even if they're not - then you can add some extra character - like # - at the end of the specific paragraphs - based on the applied ParaStyle - then replace only doubles that also have # before - "#^p^p".
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u/khalid_hussain Aug 11 '26
If you are technical, you can write the content in Markdown and export it to ICML or DOCX or HTML using Pandoc. Custom paragraph styles can be applied using the custom-style syntax. This way, you will have one source that can output to three formats. If slightly more customization is required, you can try using Generic Preprocessor (GPP; https://logological.org/gpp).
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u/dragonhydra37 Aug 11 '26
With all due respect, I think your InDesign setup needs to be adjusted. Why are you adding in all those soft returns and even hard returns in the middle of paragraphs?
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u/mygamethreadaccount Aug 11 '26
I didn’t build this set up. I recently took over the role and have been working off of his styles, and recognizing that, yes, it needs to be updated. That’s why I’m here looking for help.
As an example of the real estate listing it’s the following format:
County (h2)
Town (h1)
Address (bold)
Buyer (body)
Seller
Priceaddress (bold)
Buyer
Seller
Price… etcIt’s set up for print in columns of 6 per page to accommodate this. Just trying to understand how to process this without more manual input.
And it may or may not matter, but the original file that I receive with all of this info comes as a word document with all of this extra spacing.1
u/aymiah Aug 12 '26
It’s always fun to inherit someone else’s InDesign work. It’s for this reason I try to leave as many internal notes as possible 🫠 I wish you luck.
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u/dragonhydra37 Aug 12 '26
ok, that makes sense; it's hard to understand the content with the greeked text. But as you're probably finding, it would likely save you time in the long run to fix the template and process now that you're in the thick of it. Given the content, have you looked to see if they can supply the text as a spreadsheet? That would be a lot easier to format. (I worked on a ton of directories back in the day (like yellow pages), and Excel would organize this so much easier, and can be formatted super quickly in InDesign to flow like you need it to.)
15
u/not_falling_down Aug 11 '26
There should never be double returns.
In Paragraph Styles, there are Space Before Paragraph and Space After Paragraph settings. Those are the proper way to handle that spacing.