Find/Replace special characters

[redcedar]

I need to find/replace multiple carriage returns. I need to know if there are special character combinations I can use to represent a carriage return.

[v_kyr]

Usually you can use the following simple expression ...

[\r\n] = Win cariage return & linefeed (should match either or both then)

[\r]    = Win cariage return

[\n]    = Unix/Mac linefeed

... in a reg expr which should match those characters. Though Publisher might use/have a predefined paragraph end symbol which you can use then instead in a normal find/replace run.

[redcedar]

Thank you, v_kyr.  I tried /n and it won't work. The FIND function does not recognize it as anything other than text characters.

Have been trying to work an existing .pdf document that was written in Apple Pages.  Loaded it into Publisher, but it comes up with line returns after every line in the doc. Was hoping to use FIND/REPLACE to deal with these. I don't know anyway to get Publisher to recognize this text as continuous. Microsoft used to use the carat ^ symbol to initiate commands, so that line return was ^p.  Having a tough time here. Thanks for your time!

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Though Publisher might use/have a predefined paragraph end symbol which you can use then instead in a normal find/replace run.

In fact, Publisher does have such a character, and it's available in the pull-down for the Find string:

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, redcedar said:

The FIND function does not recognize it as anything other than text characters.

You need to tell it to do a Regular Expression search if you use the regular expression characters that v_kyr showed you:

 

On the other hand, the Paragraph Break special character should work in either mode.

[v_kyr]

14 minutes ago, redcedar said:

Thank you, v_kyr.  I tried /n and it won't work. The FIND function does not recognize it as anything other than text characters.

Have been trying to work an existing .pdf document that was written in Apple Pages.  Loaded it into Publisher, but it comes up with line returns after every line in the doc. Was hoping to use FIND/REPLACE to deal with these. I don't know anyway to get Publisher to recognize this text as continuous. Microsoft used to use the carat ^ symbol to initiate commands, so that line return was ^p.  Having a tough time here. Thanks for your time!

For Unix/Mac based text you search in a regular expression for "\n" and not "/n", since on Unix systems and Macs a \n is the linefeed character. On Windows in texts a line end is instead \r\n, so a carriage return + linefeed. - I would assume that Pages also used \n as linefeeds here when generating a PDF, since usually that's the common way for text handling of Unix (and MacOS is a BSD based Unix) systems.

In reg expressions a "^" indicates a line start position, thus a reg expr like "^A" would search after a capital (uppercase) A at the start of a text line (the ^).

You can play with and test your regular expressions here at https://regex101.com/

[sfriedberg]

1 hour ago, redcedar said:

I tried /n and it won't work

You want backslash, not forward slash, when you try that.

Ah, I see y_kry already mentioned that.