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• • October 24, 2017 at 6:17 pm #99202
    Alex Songe

    Participant

    I work for a newspaper and we use BLOX, which allows little formating to files, so tabulating material emailed to us and then put in BLOX is a pain. Once I move the copy to Indesign, I do a search for a space and then turn it into a tab, this takes forever because I don’t won’t to change all the spaces to tabs.. I wanted to see if a GREP expression can be created that inserts a tab in front of every number, but not after a number that is followed by a period, comma, or close parentheses. I currently would like to use this for a high school football poll. Here are what a few lines would look like:

    First-place votes in parentheses
    Rec. pts prv
    1. John Curtis (8) 120 1
    2, Rummel (2) 115 2
    3, St. Augustine 99 3
    4, Karr 88 6

  • October 24, 2017 at 9:07 pm #99209
    Graham Park

    Member

    If the text is all formatted with a number followed by a full-stop then use this GREP.

    Find
    ^(\d+.)
    Replace
    $1

    Your sample has commas and full-stops so you would need to use
    Find
    ^(\d+(.|,))

  • October 24, 2017 at 9:08 pm #99210
    Graham Park

    Member

    Sorry the space did not paste

    Your sample has commas and full-stops so you would need to use
    Find
    ^(\d+(.|,))

  • October 25, 2017 at 1:21 am #99216
    Kai Rübsamen

    Member

    Graham, I’m pretty sure, he needs some more tabs :)

    
    @Alex: Please provide a example where we can see, where your tabs must be inserted. It isn’t clear to me, if you need a tab at the start and before the open parentheses.

  • October 25, 2017 at 4:00 am #99217
    Graham Park

    Member

    Kai
    You are right if Alex wants to replace the spaces with Tabs then a few GREP or a script will be needed.
    This sequence work for the example he posted, I also had it add two Tabs where there is no number in parentheses so the following numbers will line up.
    I’m sure someone can simplify this.

    Find (\)||\d)()(\d)
    Replace $1$3

    Find ()(?)(\(|)(\d
    Replace $1$3$4

  • October 25, 2017 at 2:25 pm #99222
    Alex Songe

    Participant

    One thing I forgot is team records and that involves more numbers and punctuation, so here is revised sample.. First-place votes in parentheses
    Rec. pts prv
    1, John Curtis (8) tab 8-0 tab 120 tab 1
    2, Rummel (2) tab 6-2 tab 115 tab 2
    3, St. Augustine tab 5-3 3tab 99 tab 3
    4, Karr tab 88 tab 6-2 tab 6

  • October 25, 2017 at 2:41 pm #99223
    Graham Park

    Member

    ALex
    The first GREP work except for example
    Only the 5.3 3 that you have in there does not work as there is no way pattern to this part. Is this an error in your example?

    (Also my second expression was missing a closing parenthesis which stopped it working but you don’t need this one)

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