HELP very new to this need help with lines please.

Lois

Hi I need help on how to do the below please.

So I have a large document in this layout.

2016-10-18 21:42:26 - Mum:

New
2016-10-18 21:48:19 - Lois:

Ohhhh I like them ones
2016-10-20 18:17:12 - Lois:

Me too
2016-10-20 21:11:59 - Lois:

They look cool.

But I need it to be like this so that the space between each line is removed and that the message follows on from the participants name. Its a very large document so I cant do this manually via each line. Thank you. An example below of how I need it to be.

2016-10-18 21:42:26 - Mum: New
2016-10-18 21:48:19 - Lois: Ohhhh I like them ones
2016-10-20 18:17:12 - Lois: Me too
2016-10-20 21:11:59 - Lois: They look cool

PeterJones

@Lois ,

Based on what you said, I am designing a regular expression (fancy search) which looks for lines ending with a : , and collapse any newlines found immediately after that colon into a single space character.

FIND WHAT = :\R+ (find a colon followed by one or more newlines)
REPLACE WITH = :\x20 (replace with the colon and a space – \x20 is a regex way of writing a space that’s easy to copy/paste from the forum, but you could just use the colon character and space character when you are typing it in the REPLACE WITH box yourself)
SEARCH MODE = Regular Expression
REPLACE ALL

BEFORE:

2016-10-18 21:42:26 - Mum:

New 
2016-10-18 21:48:19 - Lois:

Ohhhh I like them ones 
2016-10-20 18:17:12 - Lois:

Me too
2016-10-20 21:11:59 - Lois:

They look cool.

AFTER:

2016-10-18 21:42:26 - Mum: New 
2016-10-18 21:48:19 - Lois: Ohhhh I like them ones 
2016-10-20 18:17:12 - Lois: Me too
2016-10-20 21:11:59 - Lois: They look cool.

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Useful References

Lois

@PeterJones this worked perfectly! Thank you very much