Find and replace line feeds or tabs

[Stephen_C]

WARNING
Because of the limitations of regular expressions (or my knowledge of them!) use this workflow with care. Make sure you have a backup of your document before letting this workflow loose on the document (or copy to clipboard at the end and check the results before overwriting).

The workflow works well for its basic operations but may have unforeseen results if, for example, you're trying to replace a whole sequence of line feeds or tabs (where you may end up with more of either than you expected).

 

What it does
This Alffed workflow is a Universal Action which acts on selected text (using your Universal Action shortcut key). You can choose to find any of the following:

• single line feeds;
• double line feeds;
• single tabs; or
• double tabs.

You can then replace your selection with any of:

• single line feeds;
• double line feeds;
• single tabs;
• double tabs;
• a space; or
• nothing (effectively deleting what you chose to find).

(What you see in the replace list excludes what you selected in the find list.)

The workflow gives you the options of:

• overwriting the original text with the result (the default); or
• copying the resulting text to the clipboard.

Note
I had thought of combining this with my Find and replace text workflow but felt that made the latter unduly cumbersome. Use that workflow for text replacements and this one for replacements of non-printing characters.

 

Here is the GitHub download link for the workflow.

 

Stephen

Edited February 20, 2023 by Stephen_C
Corrected misleading typo in heading

[Stephen_C]

Version 1.1 merely changes the main workflow icon to distinguish it from icons used in the List Filters.

 

Stephen