Created attachment 185474 [details] Text data from a dos database of image information in 8 fields for each record I am trying to import data (over 30,000 records) from an old dos system. I have exported the data into a text file from within the dos programme, with a paragraph separator - the options are limited and none of the others will work. So the end-of-field and end-of-record separators are both $ (or\n). The file opens OK in Notepad. I need to import into Calc, but I have to search and replace in Writer to organise the data into an importable form. Each record begins with '10' which doesn't appear after a line break anywhere else, so I search for ^10 and replace with @@10, to identify all the end-of-records. Then I want to replace the remaining end of paragraphs with tabs, so I search for $ and replace with \t. This was taking an immense time - hours - so I force-quit and instead searched for $ and replaced with %% to enable me to later replace %% with \t. I was of course using regular expressions. So now I want to search for @@ and replace with \n. But again this is taking hours. I am attaching a file which is only a quarter of the data. I have also tried using LO 7.5.0.3 on a different machine.
I have now resolved my problem by importing a CSV file from the old programme direct into Calc. However, it should have been possible to do what I was trying to do in Writer. I have no objection to this being marked as Resolved, but you might want to experiment with the file I sent to identify the issue in Writer.
Maybe the issue is that the $ substitution it's forcing to redo the text position for the whole text for every $ substitution. So it takes a lot of time, there are 55015 ends of paragraph.