Microsoft Office Forums - View Single Post - Get rid of leading spaces before paragraphs

macropod · 06-14-2011, 10:07 PM

Hi Fig,

Try a wildcard Find/Replace, where:
Find =^13[ ]{1,}
Replace = ^p

An alternative is:
Find = [ ]{1,}([!^13]@^13)
Replace = \1

The first one replaces the spaces following a paragraph break - which is effectively the same as replacing spaces before a paragraph's text - except for the first paragraph in a Section or table cell. The second one replaces the spaces at the start of a paragraph, except for the last paragraph in a table cell. There is no Find/Replace formulation that will locate solitary 'paragraphs' within a table cell.

Your publisher probably also won't want multiple paragraph breaks (ie lines created by hitting the Enter key) between your 'real' paragraphs. You can clean those out with another wildcard Find/Replace, where:
Find = [^13]{1,}
Replace = ^p

Likewise, multiple spaces after periods, etc, for which you can use yet another wildcard Find/Replace, where:
Find = ( )[ ]{1,}
Replace = \1

Note: The correct way to apply the indented formatting you obtained via the spacebar is via first line indenting for the paragraph (eg Format|Paragraph), preferably by defining an appropriate paragraph Style and applying that to the paragraphs of interest. This is most likely what your publisher will do - along with specifying an appropriate before/after space setting for each paragraph.