Formatting issue when importing from Blogger

  • Hi everyone,

    I recently imported my site from Blogger to WordPress. Something strange is happening with text wrapping in the imported posts. For posts written January 2017 and after, everything looks fine. But for posts written before 2017, there are constant errors in the text wrapping, as though I’d repeatedly inserted soft returns into each paragraph. For example:

    Here’s the first sentence of the post. And here
    is the second
    sentence. Note how there are multiple
    returns mid-paragraph even though
    the text wasn’t formatted that way
    on Blogger.

    As you can see, this looks pretty bad, and I need to get it fixed. Obviously, I can go in and edit each post manually, but I have hundreds of pre-2017 posts, so that would be VERY time-consuming (not to mention error-prone). Is there any way that I can automatically correct this formatting error? Thanks very much.

    – Jeremy

    P.S. I would provide a link to my site, but I currently have the Under Construction plug-in enabled because I want to correct the formatting errors before making the site available to the public.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    Please show some of the HTML on one of those pages.

    I’m thinking you could try using the plugin “Better Search Replace” to find   and replace with ( a real blank ), but that could be tricky, so make a database backup first.

    Thread Starter jeremybeck

    (@jeremybeck)

    Thanks Steven. Here’s a sample paragraph with HTML (which I pulled by clicking on the “View Page Source” option from the actual post):

    <p>This wide-ranging approach is nothing new to Lonergan, whose prior feature, the magnificently messy <i>Margaret</i>,<br />
 was made in 2005—it spent years in editing purgatory, finally dropped<br />
to middling reviews in 2011, and has since acquired cult status. <i>Margaret</i> was furiously compelling cinema with moments of utter brilliance, but it also felt haphazard; <i>Manchester by the Sea</i><br />
 is similarly expansive, but it never feels scattered. Whether it’s<br />
following Lee and Patrick’s squabbles about whether to sell or salvage<br />
Joe’s boat or dropping in on Patrick’s band practice, the movie remains a<br />
 cohesive portrait of two people struggling to comprehend their own loss<br />
 and learning how to move on.</p>

    As you can see, the page source reveals that <br /> tags have been inserted at the end of each line, which I obviously don’t want. (It doesn’t appear that ” ” is being used in the HTML.)

    I’ll also note that when I try to edit the post and click on the “Code Editor” option, it doesn’t reveal those <br /> tags; it just breaks to a new line in the text. Is there a way in WordPress to edit the HTML itself?

    Thanks,
    Jeremy

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    It looks like the importer may have added those <br> tags if they were not on your original site. If so, I’d ask the folks who developed the importer plugin if there’s a way to fix it.

    If not, you’ve got a lot of editing to do. Go to the end of the line, delete to remove the line break, then add a space to fix the spacing.

    Sorry.

    Thread Starter jeremybeck

    (@jeremybeck)

    Argh, that’s disappointing. Thanks for investigating, appreciate it.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • The topic ‘Formatting issue when importing from Blogger’ is closed to new replies.