Give a Tab before and after an anchor marker using GREP

Question

HiI have few paragraphs where I have put an anchor marker at the beginning of the line. I now want to give a tab before and after that anchor marker.Currently I am using a GREP query which work only if I do find and replace one by one. The moment I do change all it deletes the anchored object also.The query which I use is Find what: ^~a and Replace with:  	$0	I have attached screenshots.What am I doing wrong ?Thanks.

Bedazzled532 · Accepted Answer

@Barb Binder Found a way to achieve what I mentioned in my question. Actually took help of some expert in Facebook Group. Sharing the solution here so that anyone who face the same issue can use this code.

It's an InDesign bug that GREP does not work well with Anchors sometimes.
Here we have to run GREP two times. First at add a tab before the anchor and then again run GREP to add a tab char after the anchor.

To add a Tab char before use following:
F: ^(?=~a)
C: \t

To add a Tab character after the anchor use following:

F: ~a\K
C: \t

Barb Binder · Answer

Hi @Bedazzled532:

~a should be in parentheses so that InDesign can capture it and add it back with $0.

That said, Change works and Change all appears to remove them, but... check Story Editor. The anchors are still there. They just no longer appear in Layout view. I don't get it.

But here's a different approach: do one manually, copy it to the clipboard and change by pasting.

~Barb

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