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cipricus
Asked: 2022-11-04 06:28:49 +0800 CST

LO Writer: Easiest way to put line of words into table as rows (list)

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Let's say we have a series of words separated by commas in a LibreOffice Writer odt document:

"water, air, fire, sky, cloud, rain, snow, ice, wind, sun, moon, star, mountain..."

What is the easiest method to list them in a LO Writer table separated by rows?

Trying to convert them to table (Table → Convert → Text to table → Separate text at "Other" → selecting , - the result is that the words are separated by columns (where the commas where), but not by rows.

words separated by columns

How to separate them by rows so that they appear as a list?

I am going to do that a lot, that's why I am looking for the "easiest way". I do have a solution but I don't find it easy enough. I am posting it below as an example:

As things are, the "convert to table" option only has options applicable to an existing list with each word on a separate line.

To create the correct lines I have used the addon/extension called "Alternative searching" to replace the spaces between words with Paragraph (ending): \p.

Then, the method Table → Convert → Text to table → Separate text at Paragraph works.

kubuntu

2 Answers

  1. Just convert the commas to newlines and then copy paste them into your libreooffice document:

    $ echo "water, air, fire, sky, cloud, rain, snow, ice, wind, sun, moon, star, mountain, river, lake, sea, fountain, wood, iron, gold, silver, lead" |
    sed 's/, */\n/g'

water
air
fire
sky
cloud
rain
snow
ice
wind
sun
moon
star
mountain
river
lake
sea
fountain
wood
iron
gold
silver
lead

    You can also redirect to a file if te data are too large to copy and then open the file in libreoffice. Since they are now in rows, it should be trivial to convert to a table with one word per row.

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  2. Best Answer

    This solution does what terdon's solution essentially does (which I prefer), but I'm adding it here since it can be done from within LibreOffice Writer, without using a terminal.

    1. Select the comma-separated list you want to convert to a single-column table.

    2. Press Ctrl+H (keyboard alternative for Edit → Find and Replace...).

    3. In the Find and Replace dialog that opens check Current selection only and Regular expressions and add:

      Find: ,

      Replace: \n

      Find and replace dialog

    4. Click Replace All.

    5. You should now have your selection as rows of text.

    6. Finally, to convert the rows to a single-column table: Table → Convert → Text to Table... → set Separate Text at to Paragraph → OK.

    An alternative way is to use LibreOffice Calc to transpose the table (convert columns to rows and rows to columns), since Writer doesn't currently have that option:

    1. Convert the list of the comma-separated words to a table as you described in your question.

    2. Copy the table from Writer and paste it to Calc.

    3. Select the pasted row in Calc and press Ctrl+X to cut it.

    4. right-click on a cell and select Paste Special → Transpose.

    5. Finally, copy the column with the words from Calc and paste it to Writer.

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