Hidden character dot madness!

[MacUtopiaMojo]

No matter what I do in find/replace in either text or GREP, I cant seem to find a way of getting rid of these hidden characters without manaully deleting. On a 50 page mail merge document, this simply is a real pain.

Importing from a cleaned CSV file and can replace other hidden characters.

[MacUtopiaMojo]

Oh, and if I copy and paste out the characters I get the following: 

[aniri5j9ox8tw2ln]

And it doesn't work if you insert this hidden characters in the Find what mask and replace it with a normal space at Change to?

[MacUtopiaMojo]

Nope, just says it cant find it. Cant even find a small part of it either. Its as if the characters are there, but then cant be found.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @MacUtopiaMojo,

Thanks for reaching out. Could you share a link to a sample CSV and AI file after uploading it to a file-sharing service, so we can check it on our end?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[MacUtopiaMojo]

Data text file attached and example Indd file showing the hidden characters.

[Peter Spier]

Pretty sure those are data field markers from your data merge operation, and the only way to remove them is to run a plain text Find/Change looking for <FEFF>.

You should read the (very long, but thorough and enlightening ) theread at https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/multiple-record-data-merge-into-paragraph-styles... where @Laubender does some deep divingg and has provided some scripting solutions to the problem of incorrect styles being applied afer balank lines are removed.

[MacUtopiaMojo]

Ok, will have a read, thanks.

[Mike Witherell]

^| translates to a hair space in the Text tab of Find/Change

In the GREP tab of Find/Change, the same character should appear as ~|

Your example looks like two hair spaces followed by a spacebar space (probably) followed by a repeat of the same

[MacUtopiaMojo]

Yes, this is wht it shows in GREP... But when I then go to search, having pasted in the hidden characters, it says Cannot find match.

[Peter Spier]

A GREP Search does not work. You MUST USE plain text and <feff>

[Mike Witherell]

A hair space can look like this with Show Hidden Characters turned on (the symbol is in blue):