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Hi all,

I am new, ridiculously new to Nisus Writer Express and I have a problem with a search & replace. Hope a good soul can help.

I got a Word file and for some strange reason, each paragraph starts with a space. I’d like to get rid of this horror. How can I do a search & replace like “[space] [start of paragraph] → [start of paragraph]”? Is it possible at all? I tried to find something… but to no avail. Thanks in advance.

Hello and welcome to Nisus.
Yes, you can do what you want. Finding such things is in fact what Nisus is best at. Here's how you do it:

1. Use Edit > Find (> Show Find) to get the Find dialog box
2. Select "Power Find" from the "Using:" selection menu
3. Place the cursor in the "Find" box and from the little gear menu choose "Special Positions > Start of Paragraph". This should give you a "bubble" labeled "Start of Paragraph". Then type a space.
4. Now do either "Find" to see all instances one at a time, or "Find All" to select all instances in your document in one go, or just do "Replace all" to replace all instances with whatever is in the Replace box. If the replace box is empty this will delete all such spaces.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the excellent instructions Philip!

One extra tip: as a convenience, when one inserts any PowerFind bubble (eg: "Start of Paragraph"), the search mode will automatically change to PowerFind.