Find and replace treating . like a wildcard

[kyriosity]

I'm trying to search for [. . .] and replace with [ . . .] (just add a space in front of the first dot), and ID has decided that . is a wildcard, so it's finding things like this:

I've restarted the program to no avail. Any other ideas?

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

You're in the GREP section of Find/Replace, and you want to be in the Text section.

[Joel Cherney]

I mean, maaaaaybe you do want to be in the GREP  section. It's a fabulously powerful tool, and has far more flexibility than the ordinary search. But if you want to find something right now, then you probably don't want to stop and learn about how amazing this new tool is. There's a bit of a learning curve involved.

[kyriosity]

Ahhh! Thank you!

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

@Joel Cherney is correct

You are in the GREP portion of the search function.

Switching to the Text search is what you need. 

For the record - for GREP it is finding regular expressions and period is a wildcard.

You're searching for

. . .

Which is finding [any character][space][any character][space][any character]

Which is why you're finding what you're finding

If you need to find an actual Period (the .]

Then the expression would be 

Find

\. \. \.

Replace with

 $0

That will find the [period][space][period][space][period]

And replace with

[space][found text]

(where $0= found text]