Need to identify, select and remove an unknown non-printing character

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
April 7, 2023
2 replies
790 views

I am working in the Story Editor window and have come across a non-printing character I can not identify. It seems to be an artifact from a Word doc that was formatted unusually and seems to be causing havoc with performance. See screenshot:

What is it, and how do I seach and replace it?

Thanks! CWS

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Joel Cherney

Community Expert

This is actually something that Uwe @Laubender has posted about a great deal. There's a good summary in this thread. The upshot is that you can use the Find tab of the Find/Change dialog (NOT the GREP tab) and search for <FEFF>. However, he advises against doing a Replace All, because there are acutally a number of possible things that a <FEFF> glyph can do besides being a text anchor.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Joel meand the TEXT tab...

Joel Cherney

Community Expert

Aw, jeez. Thank you Peter, yes, I mean the TEXT tab. This one:

Steve Werner

Community Expert

CreativePro.com offers a number of publications. One of them is a "Guide to Special Characters in InDesign."

That appears to be a Cross-reference Destination.

It would be used in InDesign if you are using the Cross-References panel. If you're not using cross-references you can probably just delete it.

Steve Werner

Community Expert

PS: The guide can be downloaded if you sign up for a CreativePro.com membership—which offers many benefits! (I don't work for them, but write for them occasionally.)

C

cwscarbroughAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks, Steve. I really appreciate the help. The guide actually says they’re a text anchor, something I’ve never used. What I can’t figure out is wjhat search expression to use for the character so I can use Find-and-Replace to delete all 300+ of them. CWS

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