Find/Replace Debacle

[Thomasja]

I was instructing a friend on how to remove extra spaces before paragraph symbols, but instead of writing "In the find box, enter a space and then a paragraph symbol, and in the replace box, enter just the paragraph symbol," I wrote "In the find box, enter a space, and in the replace box, enter just a paragraph symbol."

As a result, she has a paragraph symbol between every word. Reversing the process will remove all the legitimate paragraph marks. What to do? Undo is not an option.

[RetiredGeek]

Theoritically, there should now be two Paragraph marks wherever there used to be an actual paragraph break. So you have a three step process.
1. Search for Doubled Paragraph Marks and replace them with a unique string, e.g. #*&#*&.
2. Search for Single Paragraph Marks and replace them with a Space.
3. Search for #*&#*& and replace with a Single Paragraph Mark.

Of course you'll do all of this on a COPY of the document!

Hope this works for you.

[Thomasja]

Fantastic, RetiredGeek. You always come though.

[RetiredGeek]

You're most welcome.

[macropod]

You could use two wildcard Find/Replace operations, where:
Find = ([!^13])([^13])([!^13])
Replace = \1 \3
Find = [^13]{1,}
Replace = ^p