Add Hard Return around Paragraph spacing Before/After in Microsoft Word

Questions & Suggestions
17

Got it.

For the sake of delivering clean work, here is a variant that sets the style of any newly inserted empty paragraph to the base style “plain text”.

That is, no lonely list bullets in empty paragraphs. Styles of the existing paragraphs are left untouched.

tell application "Microsoft Word"
  tell active document
    set spacedPars to every paragraph whose (space before is greater than 0 or space after is greater than 0)
    repeat with thePar in spacedPars
      if space before of thePar is greater than 0 then
        set space before of thePar to 0
        insert text "†" at before text object of thePar
      end if
      if space after of thePar is greater than 0 then
        set space after of thePar to 0
        insert text "†" at after text object of thePar
      end if
    end repeat
    set makePars to find object of text object
    set content of makePars to "†{1,}"
    set content of replacement of makePars to "^p"
    # Optional: style of the inserted empty paragraphs
    set style of replacement of makePars to style plain text
    execute find makePars match wildcards yes replace replace all
  end tell
end tell

Please give it test run. If it’s fine I will also update my answer to your post on StackOverflow.