Formatting tips and tricks? [Problem resolved]

Go to Edit > Replace

In the Find box put in: ^w^p

(the "w" stands for whitespace, the "p" stands for paragraph)

Put ^p in the Replace box.

You can do them one-by-one, or do a replace all.

I HAVE EDITED MY ORIGINAL POST TO SHOW WHAT WORKED FOR PROFEN4 IN CASE SOMEONE ELSE COMES ALONG LATER WITH THIS SAME PROBLEM. I WAS GOING BY MEMORY WHEN I FIRST POSTED A REPLY. I HAD FORGOTTEN THAT SOMEONE NEEDED TO ADD ^P IN THE REPLACE BOX.

Try this: search and replace for ^t (that's a tab) plus a blank space. Replace with just ^t.

If you used autoformatting, I don't think it'll work, but I bet somebody will know a way that does. We've got some smart people around here.

Maryn, who sees them all the time

I do this kind of thing quite a bit, but always do it on a copy of my file. While it is rare that a massive search and replace blows up on me, I want to have a clear safety net.

What usually works well for me:
1) As you mentioned click the paragraph mark so that you can see hidden non-printing characters. Put in clipboard the type of text that you want to adjust in some way. Usually it is then pretty obvious which element in the "find" is the "offensive" element. Then paste the same thing in the Replace field and edit it so that you get what you want.

2) If I have a significant number of problematic things to clean up, I usually will create a new word doc and cut and paste two or three examples of a given type of problem. I then make a copy of this word doc so I have another test document if I need it later. I practice on the test document and actually cut and paste into it the Find and Replace entries that I found work out. I use that as my cribsheet for fixing the real document.

I sometimes need to move things from Indesign to a word doc and sometimes the word doc inherits a number of problematic areas.

On very rare occasions, I have to be very aware on my approach. By this I mean, there are times that I need to do the Search and Replace in a particular sequence do that if I am choosing "replace all" that it is only acting on the instances that I truly want to change. When there are several hundred replacements that need to be done, the "replace all" is a huge time saver, but I need to be confident in my approach.

I often will write a document with my personal abbreviations designed for that document, and then do a search and replace to get the actual text that I want. This can be a great time saver especially if you your WPM are not >50.

Thank you for the comments I also have both of these problems and this would make it so much better than having to search for each one.