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Para Joiner

Joins selected paragraphs by replacing breaks with a single space.

paragraphsproductivity
Download Script(updated 2026-10-14)
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Joins selected paragraphs by replacing breaks with a single space.

Installation

  1. Download the zip file and unzip it.

  2. Run the script in one of two ways:

    a) Run directly — Open the Script Editor panel (Window > Scripting > Script Editor), paste the contents of para-joiner.js into the editor, and press Run.

    b) Save to Script Library first — Follow step (a) above, then click Save As… to save the script to the Script Library. Open the Script Library panel (Window > Scripting > Script Library) and click the saved script once to run it.

Purpose

Joins the selected text range by replacing paragraph breaks, soft returns (Shift+Enter), and surrounding non-printing whitespace (regular spaces, tabs, NBSP, thin, hair, ideographic, etc.) with a single normal ASCII space. Runs of whitespace are collapsed to one space and punctuation at line ends (commas, full stops, etc.) is preserved — only spaces/tabs/NBSP-family are ever removed. Character styles and inline elements (custom fields, etc.) are preserved because only the affected glyphs themselves are touched. Paragraph style is left as-is (the merged paragraph natively retains the first paragraph’s style; the pull-back line acquires the previous line’s style), making the script generally applicable. No <Style> Block style is applied.

Works on both normal and master-derived text frames. On master-derived frames, a temporary character style is applied to the live selection to discover its range, then undone. Supports linked/threaded frames spanning spreads — a selection that spans linked frames across pages is joined as one paragraph with a single space (no forced break at the thread/overflow boundary); separate unlinked text boxes are not merged across stories.

How it works

The script first captures the live text selection — directly from doc.selection when available, or via a temporary character-style marker (applied with doc.formatText, then undone) when the selection sits in a master-derived frame where doc.selection reads empty. Hits are grouped by text flow (textFrameInterface.textFlowNodes) so a drag spanning linked frames across spreads coalesces to a single logical story range.

It then scans that range for hard paragraph breaks (story.isParagraphBreak) and real soft breaks (glyph.isSoftBreak with !isCharGlyph, since plain spaces also report isSoftBreak), expanding each break to swallow adjacent trimmable whitespace. Only non-printing whitespace is ever included — punctuation is explicitly guarded — and per-position story.getText(pos, 1) reads avoid the U+2029 snapshot misalignment where bulk getText(begin, count) omits break characters. Each run is replaced N→1 with a single space in one batched CompoundCommandBuilder, executed right-to-left, in a single undo step without moving you to another page.

Features

  • Break joining — Hard paragraph breaks and real soft returns (Shift+Enter) become a single space
  • Whitespace normalisation — Tabs, NBSP, thin/hair/ideographic spaces and multi-space runs collapse to one ASCII space
  • Punctuation safe — Commas, full stops, ; : ! ? ' " - ( ) at line ends are never stripped
  • Character styles preserved — Only break/whitespace glyphs are touched; character styles and inline objects survive
  • Paragraph style untouched — Merged paragraph keeps the first paragraph’s style natively; no Block style created
  • Cross-spread threaded support — Linked frames across pages join as one continuous paragraph (A1 A2 | B1 B2 → A1 A2 B1 B2)
  • Master-derived frames — Style-marker capture with guaranteed undo
  • Single undo — All replacements revert in one step
  • Silent — No alerts; exits quietly when there is nothing to join
  • Stays on your page — The viewport never moves as a result of the run

Usage tips

  • Drag across the paragraphs to join (a bare caret is not enough — make an actual text range selection).
  • Clicking a text frame without selecting text does nothing; drag across the text you want merged.
  • For threaded stories, drag from the first frame into the linked frame across the spread — the whole span joins as one paragraph with single spaces, including the break at the thread boundary.
  • A single plain space is left alone; only runs that would change (multi-space, tab, or NBSP-family) are normalised.
  • Everything reverts in one undo step if the result surprises you.

Known limitations

  • A text range selection is required — a bare cursor (insertion point) is not supported (exits silently, no alert).
  • Paragraph style is left as-is; the merged paragraph retains the first paragraph’s style natively. No Block style is created or applied.
  • Only linked/threaded frames are supported for cross-spread selections; separate unthreaded text boxes cannot be selected together in Publisher and that case is not handled.
  • No alerts are shown — if no break/space to normalize, the script exits silently (more generally applicable).
  • Zero-width spaces (U+200B, U+200D, U+FEFF, etc.) are not normalised to a visible space because doing so would insert a character where none existed. If you need them removed, that can be added separately.
  • On master-derived frames, a bare cursor cannot be detected; make an actual text selection.

Changelog

1.3.14 - Fixed the spread switch on cross-spread/master-derived joins breaking the single-undo guarantee (now folded into the same compound, matching para-pairs.js); fixed a selection-capture edge case where genuinely separate (unthreaded) stories were silently merged into one nonsensical range instead of being treated as unsupported; removed dead multi-scope plumbing this made unreachable; removed a redundant punctuation guard and a self-contradicting whitespace helper; de-duplicated repeated node-walk and flow-matching passes; template literals throughout

1.3.13 - Marker-probe cleanup now guarded by history position, so a failed scan can no longer leave the temporary style on the text; extracted a shared dedupe helper; added 'use strict', named constants, and removed dead code

1.3.12 - Match linked frames by text-flow membership (textFrameInterface.textFlowNodes); Story objects expose no identity primitive, so story-identity grouping could never match across wrappers

1.3.11 - Size reduction; faster on large threaded selections

1.3.10 - Fix maxEnd truncation for distinct wrappers

1.3.9 - Fix second linked frame not joined

1.3.8 - Threaded-only, no alerts; coalesce distinct JS wrappers

1.3.7 - Cross-spread linked/threaded support

1.3.6 - Remove <Style> Block application

1.3.5 - Fix isSoftBreak mis-detection

1.3.4 - Robust whitespace handling for U+2029 omission

1.3.3 - Fix double-space and punctuation regression

1.3.2 - Bug fix: merging preserves commas and punctuation

1.3.1 - Performance: batched text replacements

1.3.0 - Non-standard space normalisation

1.2.0 - Soft returns handled alongside hard breaks

1.1.0 - Character styles and inline objects preserved

1.0.1 - Fix paragraph breaks now joined correctly

1.0.0 - Initial version; works on normal and master-derived frames