5 minute tip #7
Replacing non-text characters in a Word document (and why you might wish to)
There are lots of hidden "goodies" in the average word processor, but we don't have time to go into them all. So let's have a look at the not-so-humble search and replace feature. In most cases, people use it for replacing, say, "man" with "person" throughout a document. Indeed, in really simple word processors that's just about all you can do. But in the better word processors you can actually search for special characters or formatting.
For example, in Word you can search for hidden codes which mark the end of paragraphs. Why would you want to do that? Well, if you've pressed the Enter key too many times after some paragraphs, you could search for every pair of paragraph marks and replace it by a single one. In a short document, this technique won't save you much time -- but in a document which is several pages long, you will certainly notice the difference.
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