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When I copy work from Word into our CMS to publish, I often see words run together on the front end. Not completely joined, but the space is closed more than between other words. The source is the Word doc, only visible when paragraph marks are turned on, and hard to see even then.
Look between laws and that or between apply and generally or the and Federal. There are several more.
This is how it appears on the front end. It is subtle, but it is important for our brand to maintain consistency and a certain look and style. Where there is no paragraph space mark in Word, there is only a half-space here:
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
To clarify what space it is, try to select (highlight) the space between laws and that, then press <Alt+X>. The modern Word will display the code of the character. In case of regular space, it will show 0020.
Thank you! I see this is a 202F—a narrow no-break space. I don't understand how they have crept into my documents, but this helps identify them. I see I can highlight and copy them, paste them into the find field and leave the replace field blank, and that works. I do not see an option to search for them in Advanced find under Format or Special, so I'll just have to search each document every time with the naked eye. Any suggestions there? Much appreciated, Viorel.
To specify the code, enter ^u8239 to Find what and uncheck the Use wildcards, i.e. convert 202F to decimal (using Calculator, for example).
To search for a range of suspicious characters, select the Use wildcards option and search for [~-￮]. The “~” is Tilde — the last character from Basic Latin. The “￮” is one of the highest non-Latin characters. (It can be entered in Word document by typing FFEE, highlighting, pressing <Alt+X>, then copied to Find dialog).
Try simply selecting one of the strange spaces and press Ctr+ and then Ctrl+H to bring up the Replace dialog.
In Find What, press Ctrl+v; in Replace With press a single space.
Thanks, Charles. That is a solution. It will work when I notice them, but they are very hard to spot and with each new document I might miss them. If I could reliably search without needing to comb the document with the naked eye it would be more idea.
I could always just keep a document with those weird spaces handy, copy from that and paste it into the Find field of whatever I'm working on, which is what I'll do unless someone has the right code. Appreciate you chiming in.
They likely are some variation of the non-breaking space and might be picked up by ^s. However, that character really is supposed to be represented as the degree symbol.
Consider gathering these weird spaces in one spot and creating an AutoText entry that holds them. Then record/write a macro inserting that AutoText entry and replacing each of those from the insertion. Assign that to a keyboard shortcut for cleanup.
Using Replace All, you should be able to find ALL instances and replace with ordinary spaces.
Another approach is to use the Find dialog to select all the instances found. After copying your mystery mark to the "Find what" box of the Replace dialog, switch to the Find tab and click Find In.
Select Main Document (usually the only option), and all the found characters will be selected. Click on the title bar of the document to move the focus out of the dialog without deselecting the found characters and press the Spacebar to replace them.
That's a cool feature, I had not explored Find in. Thanks, Suzanne!
When paragraph marks are revealed, the spaces that aren't regular spaces (the dot), or non-breaking spaces (the circle), but are just blank, are narrow no-break spaces (NNBS). You can find them in Word by going to Insert > Symbol, enter character code 202F in the Symbols tab.
To search for these in your document, enter ^u8239 in the Find or Search field. In the Replace field, create a space.
If you have paragraph marks on and you see a NNBS, you can reveal its character code (202F) by highlighting it then Alt + X. Alt + X will change it back.
Please correct me if I've got anything wrong, and thanks to everyone who jumped in with great answers so quickly.
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Hi @Garrett,
Thank you for posting your question to Microsoft Q&A Forum.
The spaces you’re seeing without a dot or circle when paragraph marks are turned on in Word are usually non-breaking spaces (NBSP) or other special spacing characters.
Unicode U+00A0) or thin spaces instead of normal spaces.You can use Find and Replace feature to find and replace them in Word:
Ctrl + H).^s is Word’s special code for non-breaking space.With other invisible spaces, you can use wildcards in Find and Replace:
^u00A0 (Unicode NBSP) or other codes if needed.To avoid this before it happens, when pasting from external sources:
Ctrl + Shift + V in some versions).I hope this information is helpful. Please follow these steps and let me know if it works for you. If not, we can work together to resolve this.
Thank you for your patience and your understanding. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to share them in the comments on this post so I can continue to support you.
I look forward to continuing the conversation.
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That's a good explanation. I am not able to use Find and Replace to identify any narrow no-break spaces (NPSP or 202F), unfortunately.
^u00A0 does not work with or without the Use wildcards box checked. With it checked, I get an error message ( ^ is not a valid special character for the Find What box when Use Wildcards is selected).
I can copy/past the NPSP into the Find field, but this assumes I notice it every time I work on something in Word, and those NPSPs are very hard to spot.
Any other suggestions on how to find them without the naked eye?
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Hi @Garrett,
Word’s Find and Replace can be tricky with Unicode characters like Narrow No-Break Space (U+202F) because ^u00A0 works for NBSP (U+00A0) only when wildcards are off, but it doesn’t support U+202F.
When Use wildcards is enabled, Word doesn’t allow ^u syntax.
As other people recommended, you can use Alt + X to converts it to the character and paste it into Find what to replace with a normal space.
You can also use Regex: \x{202F} to find Narrow No-Break Spaces.
If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to share them in the comments on this post so I can continue to support you.