Find something and Replace with nothing, i.e. delete it doesn't work

[homegro]

Hi,

trying to delete (by FIND AND REPLACE with empty replace field) the soft hyphen characters within a text pasted from a MS Word document, I didn't succeed. In case of an empty replace field, the "Replace All" button is greyed out.

Is there an other way to do it?

[A_B_C]

Search and replace the soft hyphens in Word. Sorry for this pragmatic answer. 

As a rule, it seems you will have to click Find before you can use Replace All. Nonetheless, you are right that “Search and Replace” currently does not work as “Search and Delete.” That means, we cannot replace strings with the empty string. But I would strongly agree: that should be possible! 

[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, A_B_C said:

Nonetheless, you are right that “Search and Replace” currently does not work as “Search and Delete.” That means, we cannot replace strings with the empty string.

Actually, we can, but there's a trick. You must type something into the Replace box. So, just type a space or any other character, and backspace over it leaving the box empty. This seems to be different than having never typed anything at all, and will allow Replace to delete whatever Find selected.

[A_B_C]

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work on my machine … 

[walt.farrell]

I see you're on a Mac, so maybe that's another aspect of the Find and Replace panel not having some of the options that it has on Windows.

[SillyWalk]

On 9/2/2018 at 5:40 PM, A_B_C said:

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work on my machine … 

 

Same problem on my Mac...