Word Find and Replace Special Characters

http://lawofficesolution.com/ Use MS Word's advanced find and replace feature to remove extra white space (non printing characters) from a Word 2007 document that contains text converted from another file format. Remove paragraph marks, spaces, non breaking spaces, hard spaces, etc.

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Closed Caption:

this document was converted from a . lit
file format to microsoft word and it
came across with a bunch of spacing that
we don't want we're going to use
advanced fine to replace to get rid of
that spacing so that it behaves normally
now don't be distracted by the fact that
the words are gibberish that is only the
case because i replace certain or
letters in this document with other
letters to protect the original / the
authors copyright so to get rid of the
white space that I don't want I first
we'll need to find out what's causing it
and on the home ribbon and word i'll
turn show/hide on clicking the paragraph
mark symbol this shows me all the
non-printing characters and now I can
kind of get a feel for what's going on
here i'm going to drop my zoom down so
we can see a little bit more of this at
once
it looks like right in the middle of
paragraphs at the end of every line
rather than Texas rapping we have hard
return hard return space the little
black dots are regular spaces then
between what would actually be
paragraphs we have to our returns a
regular space a non-breaking space
that's what this degree symbol is
another couple more hard returns in
another space really what we just want
there is one simple hard return also
i'll notice as I looked through the
document that here and there we have
these non-breaking spaces where we don't
want them as I scroll I see specifically
that they seem to be at the end of every
sentence . non-breaking space .
non-breaking space so the first thing we
want to do is get rid of the string of
texts between the paragraphs and replace
it with something else now we can't just
replace it with a regular hard return
because when we later go to get rid of
the double hard return space we could
end up wiping out some of our hard
returns depending on how many of them
fall in what order so i'm going to
replace it with a string of characters
that I would not typically have in a
document so how do i do that well i can
press ctrl H on my keyboard or click
replace on the home ribbon brings up my
fireplace dialog box here i have a more
button where i can drop down to see a
lot more options and one of them is
special so I need to identify the
pattern and it appears to be enter enter
space non-breaking space in your inner
space so how do i put that in here
well once I know these special
characters i could just type them in but
originally i'm just going to pick them
so I can see what they are so paragraph
mark as my heart return to my enters
I've got to those in a row followed by a
regular space which I just type from the
keyboard followed by a non-breaking
space which is also on this list now I
can see the caret symbol which you'll
find on your six key shifts six followed
by lowercase P is a hard return rate
enter paragraph mark so that is going i
can just type in here now so i will also
shift six lowercase P shift six
lowercase P and then there's a space
after all that so I'm just going to type
all that and now what I want to replace
this with let's go with a three
exclamation points because that should
not ever occur in this document unless
maybe I don't know what twelve-year-old
girl was typing this or texting this to
somebody replace all there's a lot of
these so it may take it a minute that
I've done this a couple times getting
ready on this computer so it's going
faster now but it may take a couple
minutes for you then I got rid of those
it you can see the three ! about my
document now I want to get rid of these
characters that are right in the middle
of sentences it should be there at all
so enter enter space really should just
be a space so i could go through and
just get rid of every instance of too
hard returns and leave the space in so i
will replace those with nothing and it's
done now my entire document is one big
paragraph i need to break that back into
multiple paragraphs so let's go get all
our series of three exclamation points
and replace those with paragraph marks
ctrl H on the keyboard or replace and
this time we're looking for three
exclamation points and what we really
want is a paragraph mark if I remember
the shift six lowercase P i could type
it in otherwise I could pull it from
special place all ok we're all don't
that this is starting to look a little
bit better i do have these non-breaking
spaces between sentences that shouldn't
be like that they just be regular spaces
so i'm going to replace those now you
may put one or two spaces between your
sentences they say you don't need two
spaces anymore but I can't stop myself
so i'm going to replace all of those
with double spaces so do my find replace
look for a non-breaking space i'll just
pull it off of here and i'm going to
replace it with two spaces i'll just
type space on my keyboard
we've got it now the only thing left is
I would prefer some white space between
these paragraphs so I really should
format them to do that I could do that
one of two ways
I you might just select all the text and
go to paragraph and put your paragraph
formatting in this case i'll do a lines
worth which is 12 points because we're
using a 12-point font between the
paragraphs let me undo that controls e
on the keyboard is one way to undo the
other way is to actually apply the
appropriate style now setting up and
using Styles really is a whole other
lesson so i won't get a detail on that
but if i have the style i want ready i
could just press ctrl key on the
keyboard to grab my whole document and
pick the style i want you can see as I
move my mouse over these it shows what
the text would look like I just want
this simple body textile and now i have
space between my paragraphs and I'm
happy