Cut and paste tabs and "returns"?

Just tested in the current version of Pages.

Option-Tab can be used in the Find dialog to search for a TAB

I can select a Tab within the text and paste it into the Find dialog and it does as expected

Shift-Return produces a line-feed and this too can be copied and pasted into the Find dialog

I cannot locate anyway of 'Find & Replace' for Carriage return, page break, section break, column break etc as was available in Pages 09... most went missing when Apple introduced Pages 5.

If you are going to be working with invisible characters, then from the View menu, select Show Invisibles.

You can still copy/paste tabs, option-tabs, and pilcrows (¶) in your document with Pages v5 (including v5.6.1). Here is an example. I have a tab, an option-tab, and a hard return. I want to duplicate this on the next line. You double-click the pilcrow, and then hold down the shift key as you select the first tab character. The whole row gets selected, and now with a simple copy/paste, it can be replicated downward as much as you want.

The following SOMETIMES works correctly.

Copy the pilcrow and select Edit > Find > Use Selection for Find (or use Command-E).

What Pam said. That is the standard procedure for ordinarily hidden characters.

There is another trick. Let's say that you have a hair space (U+200A) somewhere in your document. From Edit menu : Emoji's & Symbols menu item, you launch the character panel. You also launch your Pages Find with command+F.

You click in the Find window, so it can receive input. In the Characters palette, you search on the literal word space. In the central section of the Character panel, all space related characters will be found, just invisible. Directly below the p of the word space, and two rows above the D, is the Hair space. Double-click it, and it will be inserted into the Find window, and the found count will reflect 1. This is a reproducible pattern for just about any character.

When you select the pilcrow, and press command+E, you have selected that invisible character and it won't show in the Find field, but you will note that it will have found all pilcrows in the count to the right. If you want to directly input a pilcrow from an empty Find text field, just press the return key in it, and the found value will be the same as if you had captured the pilcrow with the command+E shortcut.

As for the character palette, you don't want the symbol, you want the character (even if it is hidden). Pages '09 pilcrows are carriage return characters, so you really want to look for the literal string carriage return. You will see the symbol, and just to the left of it is the invisible character that you want to double-click. In all releases of Pages v5, Apple changed the pilcrow to be the line feed character. So you search for the words line feed and the first blank location is the invisible line feed character. This too, you double-click to insert into the Find field, and if any are present, you will have a count result.

The installation of any release of Pages v5 will silently move a pre-existent installation of Pages '09 into the Applications : iWork '09 folder. You can use that if you still have it. The Find command with Pages '09 has Simple and Advanced tabs on it. The Advanced tab offers a menu of special characters that are available for both the find and replace fields, and allows one to select special characters. For instance, one can select a pilcrow, and its visible representation will be inserted into the Find field.

As you can see from the following, the Find/Replace facility in Pages '09 v4.3 is far more comprehensive than offered by any release of Pages v5. It is among the reasons we encourage users to continue using the older application if they still have it.

The following example would allow the replacement of all pilcrow with tabs. The simpler means to a single row of tab delineated words.

The Insert… menus have, and the Replace Style: menu these choices.

The results of this Find/Replace:

And after selecting this tab delineated sequence, one can make a table by choosing Format menu : Table : Convert Text to Table.