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Remove Trailing Whitespace without removing extra lines

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InDesign has a buit-in GREP Find/Change Query called Remove Trailing Whitespace which is:

\s+$

It's more powerful than I want. It finds/removes spaces, tabs, etc at the end of paragraphs, but also extra linespaces. Is there a GREP search that will find/remove all the whitespace (spaces, tabs, etc) at the end of a line, but ignore extra linespaces?

Thanks in advance.

Obi-wan KenobiCorrect answer

Legend

The \h is nice, I didn't know about that! I had to look it up, so for anyone else that doesn't know:

\h is horizontal whitespace

\v is vertical whitespace (finds both hard and soft returns)

I'd probably use +? instead of + for shortest match. Not sure if it's necessary, but it would be safer, right?

So to break \h+?$ down:

\h = horizontal whitespace

+? = repeat one or more times (shortest match)

$ = at end of paragraph

That works very well and I like the elegance of it, but if there are soft returns, it also removes the space before the soft return.

When using \s*?(?=\r) I found it does not remove the spaces before soft returns, which is a little better for me. So far that looks like the winner for my exact needs.

Thanks everyone for the help! I always enjoy learning something new and hope others can benefit too.

\h+(?!\n)$

L

Linda24415233u1d0

Participating Frequently

I have changed my grep to horizontal space then tried vertical space. Both worked great except when I have a in-line table or art that are in there own paragraph. The paragraph symbol in the line before the in-line item gets deleted and i have to reinsert them. Is there something I can use in its place? Currently I am using \v+$ to remove double paragraphs and it is not working perfectly.

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Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Why would anyone wants trailing lines or paragraphs if correct paragraph styles are used?

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James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

100% agree, but I do find very selective use of line returns useful (such as dividing a long heading without creating yet another style that folds it neatly).

It does sound as if the original OP, long ago, had used them much more liberally, which is indeed a practice to avoid.

—

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L

Laubender

Community Expert

@Shanpub said: "…this is perfect for what I want to implement but the problem is when I'm adding this in script my InDesign crash"

If a GREP expression like

"\\h+(?!\\n)$"

is crashing InDesign, it could be a bug in a specific version of InDesign or a strange condition in your document you are running the code at. To test this just run your code to this point:

var doc = app.activeDocument;
app.findGrepPreferences = app.changeGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = "\\h+(?!\\n)$";
app.changeGrepPreferences.changeTo = "";

Then open the GUI for GREP Find/Change and check if you see the right expression in the GUI.

Test if the GUI can handle the Find/Change action on the active document.

If all goes well with that, return to your code and run it not on the document, but on a selection of text.

If InDesign will crash then, just provide a sample document where you see the issue. Simply attach the document to your reply post.

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

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