Strange hidden characters

[dYvon]

Hello, hope someone can help me.

I have to "clean up" an old document that was converted many years ago from QuarkXpress to Indesign.

Multiple people have worked in it, also through Incopy and also copy pasted from Word. I see some "hidden Characters" (in all kinds of colours, see attached files) I want to get rid off... what are these???

Thanks, creative greet, 

Yvonne

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Do these characters show up in Preview mode, print or export to PDF? Or are they truly hidden characters?

I think the general answer is obvious: any file that's been traded around through various editing apps is going to accumulate some odd content. My first thought would be to do the "ID purge" on it: export to IDML, open that file, save under a new name as an INDD. That rewrites files at a structural level and often purges all kinds of glitchy code and excess content.

Anything else would almost certainly need selective Find/Replace to search for each 'wrong' character code and replace it with something null or simple.

[dYvon]

Thank you for your answer! In the answer belowwas the solution. The problem is solved 🙂

[Robert at ID-Tasker · Accepted solution]

@dYvon 

Those are non-printable XML tags representations.

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/indesign/using/tagging-content-xml.html

Last two points:

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[dYvon]

YESSSSS, it works!!!!

Thank you so much for your answer! Could this have happened because people have copy/pasted items from a website? (sorry for my language, I'm from the Netherlands) 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

You are welcome.

Not sure but don't think so - someone must have copied it from some other INDD document, imported or it was there all the time - from the original Quark file but visibility was off.

If you still have original file - you can view XML contents and maybe there would be a clue about its origins.

[dYvon]

Okay, I don't have the original file, but I know it was copied, converted and there was a lot of importing and copying/pasting 🙂 the original file is from the former century...  I think it was there all the time...

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Okay, I don't have the original file, but I know it was copied, converted and there was a lot of importing and copying/pasting 🙂 the original file is from the former century...  I think it was there all the time...

By @dYvon

I meant this file - before you've removed XML. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Definitely no need to apologize for your English. You should note, though, that this forum has a very good translation feature, and with our relatively narrow vocabulary here, it works very well. Feel free to post in your home language if you feel you can express yourself better.

[dYvon]

Thanks for the compliment and the tip! I will keep that in mind 🙂