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Old 08-20-2015, 07:29 AM
ugcheleuce ugcheleuce is offline How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box Windows 7 64bit How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box Office 2003
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How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box
 
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Default How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box

Hello everyone

I have an MS Word file with a mystery character in it. I want to know how to find/replace this character (i.e. how to type it in the find/replace dialog).

When I enable viewing of non-printing characters, I see it as a little box. I managed to capture the character to a plaintext file (in the attachment between the two brackets).

When I open that in a hex editor, I'm surprised to see that the mystery character is the same as a UTF8 BOM, namely EF BB BF.

Can anyone please tell me (a) how to type this character in MS Word and (b) how to type it in the find/replace dialog?

Thanks


Samuel
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File Type: zip mystery character.zip (184 Bytes, 12 views)
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Old 08-21-2015, 03:41 AM
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macropod macropod is offline How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box Windows 7 64bit How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box Office 2010 32bit
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Your text file contains just two characters: > and <. If you want us to see what's in a document, please attach the document to a post.

PS: I don't understand why you'd attach a zipped 8 byte file that's actually 130 bytes larger than the file being zipped...
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Old 08-21-2015, 11:51 AM
ugcheleuce ugcheleuce is offline How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box Windows 7 64bit How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box Office 2003
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Quote:
Originally Posted by macropod View Post
Your text file contains just two characters: > and <. If you want us to see what's in a document, please attach the document to a post.
Okay, here it is, attached. I thought a text file would be simpler.

If you can see only two characters, then it mean that either (a) you opened it in a text editor that doesn't support unsupported characters or (b) you opened it in MS Word but did not switch on the view of non-printing characters.

Quote:
I don't understand why you'd attach a zipped 8 byte file that's actually 130 bytes larger than the file being zipped...
Because a zip file is a binary file, and my question related to a character that is not in the "usual" position in the character encoding grids, so uploading as plain text carries a risk that your web site's upload function might break the file when reading and writing it.

Anyway, I have since found two methods of getting the character's appropriate code in MS Word.

Method 1 (if you want to be able to type the character):

First find out the character's UTF8 hex code (e.g. save it as plain text and view it in a hex editor), then search for it in the fileformat.info site, e.g. to search for EFBBBF (notice I made a mistake in the thread title... it's not EFBBEF) you'd visit this link.
  • To type this character in MS Word, you need the "HTML entity hex" code (minus the initial X). In the case of EFBBBF, the HTML entity hex code is FEFF. To type this character in MS Word, type FEFF and press Alt+X.
  • To find/replace this character, you need the "HTML entity decimal" code, which in the case of EFBBBF is 65279. To find this character, in the Find dialog type ^u65279.

Method 2 (simpler, but then you can't type the character directly):

Start recording a macro, select the character, and press Ctrl+H to open a find/replace dialog (the "find" field will appear empty). Then do a quick dummy find/replace, and then stop recording the macro. The code to use in MS Word will then be visible in the macro -- in the case of my character, it's ChrW(65279). To find this character, in the Find dialog type ^u65279.

If you know of simpler ways of (a) finding out what character it is and (b) typing it directly without consulting a web site, I'll be happy to hear it.

Thanks
Samuel
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File Type: doc mystery character.doc (19.5 KB, 9 views)
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Old 08-21-2015, 03:59 PM
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macropod macropod is offline How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box Windows 7 64bit How to type EF BB EF in MS Word find/replace box Office 2010 32bit
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ugcheleuce View Post
If you can see only two characters, then it mean that either (a) you opened it in a text editor that doesn't support unsupported characters or (b) you opened it in MS Word but did not switch on the view of non-printing characters.
The issue here is that you submitted a plain text file that apparently only contained two characters. When I opened it in NotePad (being the default Windows application for opening text files) that was all that could be seen. So, it's a bit rich of you to complaining that I didn't open the file in the 'right' application.

As for the character itself, it's a Zero-width No-break Space. You could see that quite easily by selecting it in Word and choosing Insert>Symbol>More Symbols.
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