TextEdit Find ^p or ^t ?

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Level 3

622 points

TextEdit Find ^p or ^t ?

TextEdit does not have a "show invisibles" feature and from testing I know the symbols ^t & ^p do not work in the Find window. Are there symbols for paragraph and tab that do work in the Find window?

Also from experiment I know I can copy a range that includes paragraphs and tabs, but they are invisible in the Find window and easy to misuse.

Thanks for any insight.

iMac G5 and iBook G3 (10 yrs. old!), Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Jul 1, 2010 5:35 AM

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Answer 1

Fabe Author

Level 3

622 points

Jul 1, 2010 11:42 AM in response to BDAqua

That's way over the heads of my audience. What I think I will do is hope a majority of them have MS-Word. I will write separate instructions for Apple-Pages, which I feel has a less than robust Find & Replace implementation. Thanks BD

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 1, 2010 9:53 AM in response to Fabe

Hi Fabe,

Tex-Edit Plus for OS X...

http://www.tex-edit.com/

I believe it does all you want & more. 🙂

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Answer 3

Fabe Author

Level 3

622 points

Jul 1, 2010 10:39 AM in response to BDAqua

What I did not say in my original post is that I am only interested in using TextEdit. No, I'm not an elitist, I am writing directions for Mac users and I want to keep the additional software list to a minimum. I know I can do what I want in MS-Word or Text Wrangler, and I know I can do it in TextEdit, but TextEdit does not show invisibles and sometimes you are Finding & Replacing blind.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 1, 2010 11:18 AM in response to Fabe

Ah well, that's different then, the only possibility I see if you must use Text Edit, is to make a custom utf-8 font map that includes special glyphs for all the desired characters.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 1, 2010 12:23 PM in response to Fabe

OK, good luck with your endeavor(s). 🙂

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Answer 6

Jul 2, 2010 8:25 PM in response to Fabe

Hi.

In TextEdit, once you have opened the "Find" window, try typing option-tab or option-return as the search "character". This might work. I remember that this trick used to work in older versions of Microsoft Word when trying to insert a tab in tables - because the tab key was actually used to move between table cells, option-tab was programmed to insert a tab character instead of moving into the next cell. Similarly, when using dialogs such as "Find" in most applications, tab is used to move between one text entry area and the next in a dialog, the same way that tab is used on web pages to move between certain selectable items on the page. Also, as return is usually used to substitute for clicking on the OK button, option-return might be the way to insert the return character. Good luck.

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Answer 7

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 2, 2010 8:32 PM in response to Steven Jones

Great tip Steve, Option-tab does find Tabs it appears, Option+Return doesn't seem to find any thing though.

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Answer 8

Jul 2, 2010 8:39 PM in response to BDAqua

Hi.

That's interesting. I've tried it just now and it works in TextEdit for me. I'm using TextEdit 1.4 and Mac OSX 10.4.11. There may possibly be changes in later/other versions.

PS It does not work if the text being searched is highlighted. Just click anywhere in the text without selecting anything and it should work.

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Answer 9

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 2, 2010 8:51 PM in response to Steven Jones

Yeah, I'm stuck on 10.6.4/TE 1.6 at the moment, Option+Return doesn't work here.

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Answer 10

Jul 2, 2010 8:57 PM in response to BDAqua

Intriguing.

In my setup, I also tried shift-option-return and shift-option-tab as the find character.
Shift-option-return finds a return character, but shift-option-tab does nothing.

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Answer 11

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jul 2, 2010 10:29 PM in response to Steven Jones

Keep up the great work! 🙂

Turns out Option+Return does work, but not until you hit Return again, not sure what I was thinking in testing before!

Shift OptionTAB works and Shift OptionReturn does work if you hit Return again.

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