How to find tabs and replace with first line indents

English
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#1

I’m a recent “convert” from MS Word (30+ years) where it was easy to Find and Replace paragraph tabs (first line of a paragraph) and Replace them with a First Line Indent. I’m also fairly old school and really have no idea what regex codes are. I can easily find out, but this was really confusing at the outset.

Anyway … I’m trying to replace “space” “tab” with “first line indent”. I went to Ctrl H, typed a space (with the spacebar), and selected “tab stops” from attributes in the Find field, and then selected my first line indent measurement in the Replace field. Then hit Find. Nothing happened.

I searched for an answer to my question online and learned about regex and tried searching for \b (blank space) and “Tab stops” but I get a “search key not found” response even though “Regular Expressions” is enabled. In a previous attempt, I was successfully able to find and replace spaces, by simply hitting the space bar without using regex.

Having to replace tabs with first line indents is a common issue with the manuscripts I edit and I must be able to easily replace these.

#2

off topic: youre must really very very old, regular Expressions occurs firstly in 1951.

#3

Question similar to Search and Replace Tabs & Paragraph Markers.

#4

@karolus LOL I meant old school MS Word user. I know of regex, but that’s not required to Find and Replace in MS Word. I’m old enough to remember how to work a little bit in DOS, but certainly not that old. It’s probably very easy for me to find a list of regex online, but it’s not something I would know off the top of my head. I’ve never had to use it, and wasn’t taught when I was in school however many years ago.

#5

@LeroyG Thank you. Not quite what I was looking for, but yes, similar. I’m editing a document where the writer has used a blank space and then a tab at the beginning of a paragraph rather than a First Line Indent which is book publishing standard. Using Find and Replace is very convenient. But perhaps I can’t.

#6

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