Find and Replace automatic breaks
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Tagged: find and replace, line breaks
- This topic has 10 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 4 months ago by Kai Rübsamen.
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December 4, 2016 at 1:44 pm #90269Lily AlayevaMember
Hello!
I am hoping someone can help me with this. I am trying to figure out a way to find and replace all automatically breaking lines to have a forced line break. In other words, I would like to find lines that end with neither a forced line break or end of paragraph and designate a breaking character to them.
Is there a way to do this?
Thanks!
Lily -
December 4, 2016 at 6:51 pm #90270David BlatnerKeymaster
I wonder if this script would help:
https://in-tools.com/article/scripts-blog/freeze-composition/ -
December 4, 2016 at 7:33 pm #90271Lily AlayevaMember
Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, I need to find all the automatic breaks in already placed copy (to place tabs immediately after) amongst other lines with already forced line breaks, so that doesn’t seem like it will work.
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December 5, 2016 at 7:42 am #90282David BlatnerKeymaster
I guess my thought was that you could use that script and then search for the forced line breaks (shift-returns) and insert the tabs or convert to hard returns.
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December 5, 2016 at 5:04 pm #90303Dwayne HarrisMember
I’m confused about what is wanted. From my reading of Lily’s posts, I get the idea that Lily wants to find all line breaks (whether a forced return or not) and replace them all with a non-breaking space/character. But also insert tabs??
I’m not that good with GREP so I don’t even know if it’s possible to search for automatic line breaks.
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December 5, 2016 at 5:14 pm #90304Lily AlayevaMember
Hi!
So this is an example of what I need to do: I have a really long list of names, some that run longer then the column width:
John Doe The Second
Indesign takes the name and automatically breaks it as needed:
John Doe The
SecondWhat I need to find is all the times it does this (without my interference) and so that eventually I can rerag and add a tab to the second line:
John Doe
The SecondThe problem is that I have done most of this manually with forced line breaks, but I need to find the few culprits that my eyes have missed. So setting up a script won’t pin the ones that need to be reragged and tabbed.
Does that make sense? Sorry this is such a specific situation, but its something that seems to come up for me a lot!
Thanks!!
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December 5, 2016 at 5:30 pm #90307David BlatnerKeymaster
I’m glad you explained why you want to do this. Maybe there is a cleaner way to do this. Instead of breaking it up and adding tabs, I suggest using a “hanging indent.”
Set the left indent of the paragraphs to about .5″
Then set the First Line Indent (that is a different field in the Control panel or the Paragraph panel) to -.5″ (a negative number).That makes all subsequent lines indented.
More on the topic here: https://creativepro.com/how-to-hang-text-in-the-margin.php
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December 6, 2016 at 8:56 am #90316Lily AlayevaMember
Sorry, this still doesn’t address the issue. It is less about the tabs, more about the “find.”
I will keep looking.
Thanks!
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December 6, 2016 at 3:46 pm #90328Dwayne HarrisMember
What the heck? My post disappeared :(
TWO posts have now disappeared!
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December 6, 2016 at 4:04 pm #90331Dwayne HarrisMember
I think the best you can do is do what David suggests. But I’d also suggest you go to your “indents and spacing” (in your style sheet) and select balance ragged lines. I’m guessing the entries are ragged?
I don’t think there is a way to search on a line ending, as it’s a built in feature of InDesign and there are no special characters to search on when it comes to that.
What kind of job are you working on? Is it entirely a list of names and addresses? Epigraph sources?
Maybe you can post a pic (though you would have to use a image hosting service to do so). I’d mention a few names, but I won’t as maybe that is why my earlier post from a few minutes ago ended up in limbo or was considered spam by the site for some reason.
Maybe if we had an idea of what your project looks like we might be able to come up with a possible solution.
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December 7, 2016 at 2:50 am #90352Kai RübsamenMember
First of all, I would never do that with a forced line break or a tab. > Use a character style with ‘no Break’ instead.
Second, why no script? A script could search for every paragraph with MORE than one line and check, if those paragraphs with two lines have a forced line break already. If not, highlight the lines with a condition.
Kai
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