Advice on Word wanted

[Doglover]

Can anyone help me? Is there an easy way of removing tab stops from a Word document? It's a book I'm revising, one I published six years ago before I really knew what to do with the formatting. I tried stripping it out to a txt document, but it's just brought the tab stops with it.

Any advice and I shall be eternally grateful. 

[Lysmata Debelius]

Yes, you can remove them using find and replace. Hold on a bit and I'll post the instructions

[Lysmata Debelius]

This might be slightly different depending on which version of Word you are using, but the following should work:

Open Find and Replace (it should open if you press Ctrl and H )
In the "Find what" field, type ^t  (that's the symbol for tab)
Leave the "replace with" field blank.

Now if you press "find next" it should select the next tab stop, and if you press "replace" it will remove that tab stop.
To remove all of them at once, you can press the "replace all" button.

Let me know if that doesn't work.

[Doglover]

This might be slightly different depending on which version of Word you are using, but the following should work:

Open Find and Replace (it should open if you press Ctrl and H )
In the "Find what" field, type ^t  (that's the symbol for tab)
Leave the "replace with" field blank.

Now if you press "find next" it should select the next tab stop, and if you press "replace" it will remove that tab stop.
To remove all of them at once, you can press the "replace all" button.

Let me know if that doesn't work.

Thank you so much. I thought I'd have to go through the whole thing doing each one by hand! Of course it took me ages to find the pyramid symbol! Now I can get on with rewriting the story. 

[Lysmata Debelius]

What Llano said.
Be VERY careful when using "Replace All". It's a shortcut to big mistakes!

[Doglover]

What Llano said.
Be VERY careful when using "Replace All". It's a shortcut to big mistakes!

Well, I often use it for various things, like when I change my mind about a name for instance, but I've never used it for something like this.

Thanks again for everyone's help. 

[Bill Hiatt]

As long as we're talking about "replace all," it can be used not only for words (as Doglover notes) and tabs (As Lysmata Debelius notes), but for pretty much any kind of formatting. That can be useful if, for example, you want to change all instances of a particular font to a different font, eliminate extra spaces (as in an ms from the old days with two spaces after each paragraph), or pretty much anything you can think of.

For those of you who use Scrivener, it has a similar function.

[dgcasey]

As long as we're talking about "replace all," it can be used not only for words (as Doglover notes) and tabs (As Lysmata Debelius notes), but for pretty much any kind of formatting. That can be useful if, for example, you want to change all instances of a particular font to a different font, eliminate extra spaces (as in an ms from the old days with two spaces after each paragraph), or pretty much anything you can think of.

For those of you who use Scrivener, it has a similar function.

After a couple of edits, I like to use the Find and Replace to find every instance of a word. I look at those lists that say, "You should remove these words from your novel." I'll sit down and run F&R on all those words, but I won't actually replace them. I'll have the program highlight every instance, usually using a different color for each searched word. Then I start on page one and start looking at each highlighted word and see if I really want to do anything with them. This is my last step before my final read through where I have the computer read the document to me while I follow along.

[Maggie Ann]

I recently discovered that I can use F&R to replace graphics I had used for scene breaks. Apparently Kobo direct doesn't like them.

[Jeff Tanyard]

As long as we're talking about "replace all," it can be used not only for words (as Doglover notes) and tabs (As Lysmata Debelius notes), but for pretty much any kind of formatting. That can be useful if, for example, you want to change all instances of a particular font to a different font, eliminate extra spaces (as in an ms from the old days with two spaces after each paragraph), or pretty much anything you can think of.

For those of you who use Scrivener, it has a similar function.

I use it for the extra spaces thing.  I learned to type with two spaces between sentences, and I'm not interested in trying to train myself to do otherwise.  Much easier to simply do a find-and-replace when the book's done and I'm doing the final formatting.  I actually do it a few times, because you never know when an errant three-space break has somehow snuck in.

[Doglover]

And that's given me another thought. This particular ms was from those days of two spaces after a full stop; I must say I never thought of replacing them using the find and replace feature, but now I can. 

[VanessaC]

I use it for the extra spaces thing.  I learned to type with two spaces between sentences, and I'm not interested in trying to train myself to do otherwise.  Much easier to simply do a find-and-replace when the book's done and I'm doing the final formatting.  I actually do it a few times, because you never know when an errant three-space break has somehow snuck in.

I do this as well - in Scrivener.  Much easier to do the find and replace than re-learn how to type.

After a couple of edits, I like to use the Find and Replace to find every instance of a word. I look at those lists that say, "You should remove these words from your novel." I'll sit down and run F&R on all those words, but I won't actually replace them. I'll have the program highlight every instance, usually using a different color for each searched word. Then I start on page one and start looking at each highlighted word and see if I really want to do anything with them. This is my last step before my final read through where I have the computer read the document to me while I follow along.

I love this idea - a great and easy way of highlighting those pesky repeated words.  My characters have in the past spent a lot of time shivering and nodding their heads. Must try this!

[Bill Hiatt]

When I was teaching, I had the hardest time getting students to turn on the "show nonprinting characters" mode to fix the very things you're talking about. I got on their cases enough about extra spaces in essays that they eventually developed the habit.

I actually that mode even when I'm composing. I'm used to seeing the little dots for spaces and similar marks, and that way I catch the errors as they occur.

[dgcasey]

My characters have in the past spent a lot of time shivering and nodding their heads. Must try this!

I know what you mean. I'm beginning to think my characters have some sort of musculoskelatal condition, with all the nodding and shaking they do with their heads.   

[Doglover]

Sorry to drag this up again, but I've been busy moving house so haven't had time to touch my manuscript. What is the symbol for space, please? I've got lots of two spaces at the end of the sentence I'd like to get rid of.

It seems that, instead of tabs, some of this manuscript has three or four dots, but not at the bottom of the line like full stops. I have no idea how that happened; it was years ago.

[Bill Hiatt]

Sorry to drag this up again, but I've been busy moving house so haven't had time to touch my manuscript. What is the symbol for space, please? I've got lots of two spaces at the end of the sentence I'd like to get rid of.

It seems that, instead of tabs, some of this manuscript has three or four dots, but not at the bottom of the line like full stops. I have no idea how that happened; it was years ago.

Those dots are spaces.

It's not uncommon for people to space a few times instead of tabbing. You'll want to substitute a tab in each case to avoid problems during ebook conversion.

I haven't reread the whole thread, but I recall the search and replace mechanics came up before. It's easy to make all the two spaces into ones and all the three or four spaces into tabs. Sadly, though, you'll probably want to look through the whole MS after, just in case there were three spaces at the end of a sentence or something else unexpected like that.

[notthatamanda]

Sorry to drag this up again, but I've been busy moving house so haven't had time to touch my manuscript. What is the symbol for space, please? I've got lots of two spaces at the end of the sentence I'd like to get rid of.

It seems that, instead of tabs, some of this manuscript has three or four dots, but not at the bottom of the line like full stops. I have no idea how that happened; it was years ago.

Do you know styles?  If the document is this out of date format wise, and you have to go through it chapter by chapter, it may be better just to nuke all the formatting. You have copy it into word pad and then copy it into a new document, don't use clear all formatting, it doesn't do a good enough job on it. Then redo it with styles.   I sympathize, I have two compilations, 900+ pages each to do this to, but spaces and even tabs can wreak havoc when formatting into epub or mobi files.  Styles fixes all that, and once you learn it, it is really easy to use.  It was a heck of a learning curve for me though.  Lot of swearing.

[Post-Doctorate D]

I haven't reread the whole thread, but I recall the search and replace mechanics came up before. It's easy to make all the two spaces into ones and all the three or four spaces into tabs. Sadly, though, you'll probably want to look through the whole MS after, just in case there were three spaces at the end of a sentence or something else unexpected like that.

You can narrow some of that down by including punctuation marks in your search and replace.  Such as first replacing:

.[space][space][space]
?[space][space][space]
![space][space][space]

with

.[space]
?[space]
![space]

Then replace:

.[space][space]
?[space][space]
![space][space]

with

.[space]
?[space]
![space]

Next, replace three or four spaces with tabs.

Then, go through the manuscript and look for any weirdness.

Or, if Word lets you use GREP expressions, you could first replace multiple spaces following a character with single spaces and that should leave out spaces at the beginning of a paragraph, allowing for those to be replaced with tabs.

[MaxDaemon]

What Llano said.
Be VERY careful when using "Replace All". It's a shortcut to big mistakes!

Especially if you have "autosave" turned on - and it saves the resultant mess and you can't back away because the stupid thing saved it. I usually turn autosave off, I know it can be valuable, but it's just scary.

[elleoco]

I don't use Word, but in WordPerfect if you use Replace All and realize you made a mistake, Undo will revert things to the way they were. Of course you have to do that immediately. Maybe Word also does that.

[Jan Hurst-Nicholson]

My characters have in the past spent a lot of time shivering and nodding their heads. Must try this!

I know what you mean. I'm beginning to think my characters have some sort of musculoskelatal condition, with all the nodding and shaking they do with their heads.   

Remember that you can't nod anything except your head, so you only need to say 'he nodded'.