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I found a great reference on here for using Grep to remove a double space in a data merge if some names have a middle initial but others do not. But what do you do if the issue is at the start of the name. For example

<< Title >> << First >> << Last >>

<< address >>

Mr. and Mrs. John Smith

123 Apple Street

But the next person and or business does not have a title

( )Bob Brown

432 Peach Lane

0r

( )The Grant Group

795 Grape Circle

How to you remove the space before the Name field if there is no title.

I'm assuming you can use a different GREP formula to achieve this but I can't figure it out. Looking for a way to do in Indesign and not editing the OG Excel file.

This is the middle double space thread for reference. How to auto delete a space left after a data merge in InDesign?

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  • I don't know Indesign GREP, but it seems that it uses regex for this, is ^\s what you look for? This will match a whitespace in the start of a line
    – Sergey Kritskiy
    Commented Mar 17, 2020 at 16:02
  • If you're just looking to remove single spaces at the beginning of paragraphs, I can confirm @Sergey's comment works, you need to GREP ^\s and replace with nothing.
    – lmlmlm
    Commented Mar 17, 2020 at 19:21
  • This is one of the many things in Adobe Indesigns data merge that's not well thought. As we are regular data merge users we searched for a solution solving this AND all of the other little issues stumbling upon and we ended with MyDataMerge for Mac. Tiny but very powerful app calling themselves " the missing interface for indesigns data merge". If you are a regular data merge user give it a try. In your case i"d just create a condition and if there's no title I won't render it at all and start the line with first name. Few clicks-done
    – Pat_Morita
    Commented May 15, 2020 at 5:26

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