A way to find-replace thin spaces and special characters?

[Philippe Roy]

I am editing a 500 pages book. I have to change a lot of thin spaces by a non breaking narrow space (1000s of instances). I didn't found any way to do this. Copy paste in the search field only work for the «find» field. I am totaly lost here. There must be a way. GREP maybe?

[Old Bruce]

Best way to do this is to enter the thin space in the find text box by copy and paste, then use the same for the non breaking narrow space except it is called Narrow Non-Breaking Space. Make a text frame with nothing in it and insert a Narrow Non-Breaking Space then hold the shift key and use the left arrow to select the space (helps if you turn on Text > Show Special Characters) then paste that into the find field after making certain there is nothing there already.

It does work. With the caveat that your text may be from a source that has some other 'thin space' in use.

[Philippe Roy]

ôO Well, it work perfectly, just like it would with InDesign. There's a small delay before the space symbol change. I guess it the reason I thought it didn't work. The replace all was almost instant, tought.

Now I am ashamed.

Thanks a lot.