I just had my first big bit of grief from OpenOffice Writer. I was trying to replace double paragraph breaks. In Microsoft Word you just go to Find and Replace. In the find box you type ^p^p and in the replace box you type ^p. Hit replace all and you are done.

Try as I might I could not get OpenOffice Writer to do this. I searched web pages and the explanations I got there were just beyond my comprehension. In the end, I found a solution although it involved installing the Alternate Search and Replace Extension (found here).

Now all I need to do is open it and type \p\p in the find box and \p in the replace box and hit all. It took me half an hour to sort this out. I am posting it here so you don’t have to do the same.