No longer able to do find and replace for formatting characters...

Anonymous
2025-02-11T23:37:24+00:00

Now when I enter something in the find field Word informs me that it will ONLY ACCEPT LETTERS AND NUMBERS.

So, somehow I've got a lot of these little round things in my text. I don't know what they are, but I don't want them. (see image). But can I do a search for them? No.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | MacOS

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Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2025-02-11T23:47:38+00:00

Yes, you can.

First, it helps to know what they are. The degree symbol to the left of the capital I is a "nonbreaking space". In the Find and Replace dialog, you can search for that by typing ^s . The dots between words are regular spaces, which you can find by typing a space in the search box.

If you don't want to see these symbols, click the ¶ button on the ribbon to turn it off.

For a list of all the odd characters, read http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com/NonprintChars.htm .

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  1. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 437.7K Reputation points
    2025-02-12T01:19:51+00:00

    Non-breaking spaces primarily are created by either of 2 actions:

    • Using the keyboard shortcut Shift+Control+space bar, or
    • Copying content from a source which includes them

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-12T00:29:03+00:00

    Thanks so much!

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