How do I 'Find & Replace' with control characters - paragraph, carriage return, tab

Question

Level 1

21 points

How do I 'Find & Replace' with control characters - paragraph, carriage return, tab

In Pages 4.3 (Pages '09) I could insert special characters into the Find & Replace fields. It was great. Excellent way to clean up & recover text from a pdf or html.

In Pages 5.2 that capability seems to be gone. When I turn on the special characters [Show Invisibles - shift-cmd-I], I can highlight said invisible, copy it, then paste it into the Find&Replace field. Nope. It goes in as a space, and the Find command only finds spaces. Not the invisible that I was looking for.

This was a major feature for me, folks. Much better than Word's approach. Now it is gone (I fear), and the Find & Replace is worse than Word's.

How can I recover/attain this feature?

PowerMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2), ='main machine'

Posted on May 2, 2014 8:21 AM

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Answer 1

May 2, 2014 8:23 AM in response to Jay Warner1

Only by going back to Pages '09.

Pages 5 remains pretty much a feature train wreck.

Peter

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Answer 2

scboy

Level 1

9 points

Sep 12, 2014 6:09 PM in response to Jay Warner1

I have struggled to find this "feature" for a while.

It CANNOT be that Apple stripped out a core capability of even a basic text editor.

Apple, a reply here because this is a F%$#$%^ joke if true.

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,452 points

Sep 12, 2014 9:51 PM in response to scboy

Since this is an international, volunteer user-to-user community forum, no one from Apple will respond to you here. Apple had its head in a dark place when they released this crapware on unsuspecting users, and Find/Replace is just one blatant contradiction in functional terminology which is nearly useless.

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Answer 4

Sep 22, 2014 6:22 AM in response to scboy

I agree - having the same problem = I need to be able to find and replace carriage returns == it's really irritating = I suppose one could export to Word and try again? in any event, send in a feedback form to Apple, for whatever good that will do

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Answer 5

chinajon

Level 1

63 points

Jul 23, 2015 9:14 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Hi Peter

I don't know if you still follow this thread, but here is my comment.

When I updated to Yosemite, I used Pages 9 with no trouble.

After I updated to 10.10.4, Pages 9 will no longer work.

Is there a downloadable version of P9 that will run on OSX 10.10,+

Thanks

I have to have the capability of search and replace invisible chars. If no P9 is available, what do you suggest as an alternative word processor?

In rough drafts, I can use text-edit, but after a certain point it is no longer useful.

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Answer 6

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,452 points

Jul 24, 2015 5:05 AM in response to Victoria Herring

Victoria,

In a prior post, I showed how to use Find/Replace in Pages v5 for clearing up invisible document attributes such as paragraph breaks, etc. It may be useful to you.

If not already, you may wish to start using the bookmarking facility above these posts.

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