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GREP : Replace empty spaces

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
September 13, 2017
5 replies
2948 views

Hi !

I've been working on this all day and have been able to find only half an answer so I come here full of hope… ! 😃

I have a table which I import from Excel. In this table I have empty cells sometimes and I want to put a "-" in them.

I tried this grep request to find the empty spaces : (?<!.)$

Which seems to work, it finds empty spaces in the format I searching when I press "Next"

I tried to "replace" the empty spaces using : $0-

Which, oddly enough, works when I press "Replace" but doesn't when I press "Replace all"

Here is my problem then, how can I make it work all at once ? Since I don't want to replace them all at once… ^^''

Thanks in advance !

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer winterm

It ought to be as easy as Find: $ and Change to: - ... but it's not.

You may find interesting this thread. Don't bother with the answer marked as 'correct', look for Jongware's posts 6 and maybe 14.

Didn't try it myself, though.

B

Brandon29034029j0wi

Participating Frequently

For me this works

Find: ^$
Replace: -

L

Laubender

Community Expert

FWIW:

With the current versions of InDesign, e.g. InDesign 2021 and 2022 the following will work:

GREP Find pattern:

^\Z

GREP Change:

No issue to find the first instance, then do change and find next.

No need to do Change All.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

L

Laubender

Community Expert

A warning:

GREP will not recognize the special character that makes a Table object!

So, if you do a Change All the pattern "Find the beginning of a story, its first text insertion point, or the beginning of a table's text cell, the first insertion point in that cell, followed by the end of the story or the end of the text of a table cell" will also find the insertion point after that table and add a - after the table that is positioned in an otherwise empty text frame.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

T

TheAngryPorge

Participating Frequently

Use "^$" without the Quotes.

Note: If you hit the "Find Next" button it will say it cannot find a match. Hit the "Change All" and it will work. At least it does for me.

vinny38

Legend

Hi

This is an interesting puzzler.

Like winterm said before, you probably need a script to achieve this.
I haven't tested Jongware's script either, but I'm sure it would do the job...

Although, I would like to share a few thoughts :

In Excel, you can easily write and run a macro to replace empty-cell by a dash. Something like this:

For Each cel In Range("A1:Z200") //Don't forget to adjust your Range
  If IsEmpty(cel.Value) Then cel.Value = "-"
Next

So, if you use linked file, it could be an acceptable solution.

If you use a very simple table, with no merging, no funny stuff and that you just use a table style, you can also convert table to text, run a Grep query to look for 2 consecutive column separators, separator at the beginning and at the end of a paragraph. Finally revert text to table and apply your table style.
This is quite a brutal workaround, and you should be very cautious with it... (I wonder if I should have shared this crazy thought ^^)

I was very curious and surprised you said that your Grep query did allow you to "Replace" (even only once)...
Since nothing is selected, how could "Replace" work?
So I tested your GREP query, and... it didn't work for me... (Windows 7 - Indd CS6)
But... copying a dash into the pasteboard and replacing by ~C did work somehow, and still surprisingly... with the same limitation than you though: "Replace All" does not work (Obviously !).
However Find/Replace button did the job and if you don't have thousands of empty cells, it can be an acceptable workaround.

winterm

Legend

Point 1. Macros in Excel still aren't my friends, couldn't comment.

Point 2. I must confess I also considered (silently) this trick, but found it too drastic and didn't dare to share... Hey man, you're the brutal beast!

Point 3. Ha! Again, we think alike! Also played this all (incl. clipboard contents), and got identical results. So could only confirm here.

Jongware's script is the way to go, imo.

Obi-wan Kenobi

Legend

Theun is right here!

Place the cursor in any cell! Short version:

var a = app.selection[0].parent.parent, b = a.cells,  c = b.length;
while (c--) if (b.contents.length == 0) b.contents = "-";

(^/)

wintermCorrect answer

Legend

It ought to be as easy as Find: $ and Change to: - ... but it's not.

You may find interesting this thread. Don't bother with the answer marked as 'correct', look for Jongware's posts 6 and maybe 14.

Didn't try it myself, though.

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