Working With Invisible Characters In Mac Pages

When you add a space, tab or a return in Pages, you are inserting an actual character, but one you cannot normally see. By using Show Invisibles in Pages you can see these special characters and edit yoru document with precision.

Comments: 13 Responses to “Working With Invisible Characters In Mac Pages”

    nick
    3 years ago

    hey Gary, can you do a Search and Replace with invisible characters? For example, look for two or more consecutive spaces, which may be not easy to spot if you have many pages of text.

    3 years ago

    nick: Yes. You can type spaces in the search field, naturally. For other characters, you can select them in the text, copy, and then paste into the search field.

    Janet
    3 years ago

    Hi Gary ... Very informative and helpful as usual! Question: will "show invisibles" help with getting rid of the extra, empty page that sometimes appears at the end of a Pages document even though the last page with content "seems" to be completely contained within the parameters of its own page? I keep thinking there must be a way to delete that empty page, but I've not yet managed a solution other than exporting the document as a pdf, then deleting the empty page in Preview. Thanks, Gary!

    3 years ago

    Janet: Perhaps. If that page is caused by an extra Return or two, or a Page Break character, you should be able to spot that more easily. You can also just put your text cursor all the way at the bottom of the document (Command+a to select all, and then right arrow will do it too) and then Delete until those characters are gone and you are back to your last period.

    Janet
    3 years ago

    Thank you very much, Gary!

    Robert
    3 years ago

    Hi Gary, can you tell me if there is a way of moving the anchor point once a shape or image has been inserted. Cheers!.

    3 years ago

    Robert: Just drag it around. I show this at around 9:10

    Robert
    3 years ago

    Thanks Gary.

    Joe OLeary
    3 years ago

    What is the invisible character that looks like a space dot but with a caret above it?
    Some other type of space??

    3 years ago

    Joe: I answer that question in the video.

    Joe Oleary
    3 years ago

    Ooops! I missed it. Non-breaking space. Thanks.

    kristen
    2 years ago

    I need to find and replace some Invisibles. You talk about Invisibles, but what is the actual character you can use for searching for all of them. I know \n,\t,\r, but what are the actual characters for all the other Invisibles you mentioned in your video.

    2 years ago

    kristen: That covers them all, I think. Space is just space. I usually select and copy from the document and then paste into the reach field.

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