ms word 2007 "find" doesnt find paragraph

This started when i changed from word 2003 to 2007. When I use OCR, I convert the document to txt and then back to word to get rid of columns etc. All of the paragraph returns show a backward P with double line. I want to change some of them to tabs, and so i search the document with "find/replace". Word refuses to recognize some of the paragraph marks but will recognize them if i select a single paragraph return and hit enter.

Has anyone seen this before?

 

In 2007, click the orb looking button on the top left corner, then click options, on the left column, then click display on the left column. Then uncheck the box "Show all formatting marks".

Also, may want to uncheck the rest of them too. (Tab characters, spaces, paragraph marks, hidden text, optional hyphens, object anchors).

 

Thanks
That doesnt seem to solve the problem since i want to do find and replace. Whether i display the formatting marks or not, it doesnt recognize some of the paragraph returns. Even if i display only paragraph returns, it displays all of them. Then if i do find, it finds the first one, "next" finds the second etc. Then after say finding 20 or so paragraph marks, it skips the next 25 to 150 of them before it starts finding them again. I have tried it starting with the original OCR2Word document, converting to RTF, converting to txt2word etc and the results are always the same. If i replace a paragraph mark with a newly typed paragraph mark, it then finds it using find and replace.

 

I think the answer might be that MS Word is not really compatible with your OCR to Word conversion app. Why don't you try one of the other OCR to Word applications and see if you have better results. There are many free apps available. You can see what MajorGeeks recommends and provides downloads for. Also, there's OmniPage http://www.nuance.com/imaging/products/omnipage.asp (which comes free with most Canon printers, by the way), SimpleOCR - http://www.simpleocr.com/, GOCR http://jocr.sourceforge.net/, and others.

 

Thanks
I will try that and also talk to support at the OCR companies. I have a fully licensed version of ABBYY and OmniPage. Neither one does a very satisfactory job with formatting, so i usually try to convert to text and then reformat in word. They are always overformatted with columns and text boxes.

 

I'm really disappointed to hear that about OmniPage. I had it years ago and it did a perfect job converting docs to Word. I guess their tech designers never heard the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" . . .

 

Just by way of saying thanks for the suggestions, this did suggest a work around. I had assumed that the problem must be ms word since it shows all the paragraph returns. I downloaded an open software word processor from Major Geeks and copied the offending document into it, and it doesnt recognize any of the paragraph returns that MS Word wont recognize in find/replace. So when i copy it back to MS they are all gone and i can use something else to key off of in order to reformat the document. All the markup that survives the trip from ABBYY to MSWord to AbiWord to MSWord actually exists.