InDesign formatting issue - extra tab space with paragraph indent

[d.l.c.]

I've never had this issue before. I'm taking what I think is plain text with indented paragraphs as I have done before.  When I paste into InDesign with a specific paragraph style it sometimes includes an extra tab space in the indents and other times it maintains the style set for it.  Not sure why. I never had this issue before. Some paragraphs are indenting as they should while others seem to have a tab space in addition to the indent. Crazy making.

Anyone else have this experience?  Is there some trick I am missing?

Thanks for your help

[Derek Cross]

For Paragraph Styles indents it's best to use the indents feature in Indents and Spacing (rather than tabs).

[d.l.c.]

Yes. I am using an indent in the paragraph style but when I input the text it sometimes adds extra space which appears to be tab related.  This never happened before. Before (in earlier InDesign)  the tab was read as an indent and put in place as such. Now it is randomly adding space to indents. I've tried going from word to a .txt file first but it doesn't make a difference.  I don't do this a lot - is there a "best practice" when placing text into text boxes?  I have a paragraph style set etc.  Thanks again for any insights.

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Is there a tab character at the beginning of the misbehaving paragraphs? A lot of typists do this regularly, because they don't understand the concept of first line indents. To find out, go to Type > Show Hidden Characters. Look for the >> at the beginning of the line.

If they are there, the fix is easy. Find: ^p^t, replace with ^p. (which means find a ¶ followed by a tab, replace with a ¶). Save the query because you will probably need it again. If that isn't it. please share a screen shot with hidden characters showing, your cursor in a problem paragraph and the ¶ view of the Control panel open.

[d.l.c.]

Perfect - that's what it was.  Weird that I never had this happen before but maybe it's because I don't build a lot of books. 

Which leads to wonder how to pre-format so this doesn't happen and I don't have to do the "search and rescue' aspect.  I thought by converting to a txt file I could get around it but they still showed up.

Thanks again for your help and my stress reduction.

[Barb Binder]

No, because a tab is a character, it's not formatting per se. You have to yank them out. I'd guess that about half of my authors do the same thing. When I was young I would try to get the authors to prepare the files a certain way—which didn't always go over well. Over time, I learned to rely heavily on Find/Change.

That top row has a Save button to save a regularly-used query, and you can access them from the list on the left. My workflow is to place the text files, then run a string of Find/Change queries to clean them up.

[boyd_3074]

Thank you so much! This has been a game changer or me!