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My text in Indesign contains numerous instances of words followed by a comma and no space after the comma (like: "Hello,Joe"). I'd like to insert a space after the commas (corrected: "Hello, Joe"). I thought to use the Find/Change feature.

Using Find/Change I entered this in the Find dialog: "^$,^$". It finds the words with no space after a comma, as I had hoped. I thought entering "^$, ^$" in the Change field would preserve my text and add the space, but alls it does is change my text to "Hell^$, ^$oe."

How do I get this to work?

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  • Have you looked at the “Found text” submenu in the “@” menu on the Find/Change dialog box? That should have what you’re looking for. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 29 '15 at 21:58
  • Janus, When I select "Found Text" the Change field changes to "$0". What do I need to do with that in order for it to add a space after the comma? – JeremyH Dec 29 '15 at 22:11
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    You need to set off the text you want repeated in parentheses in the Find field, so you’ll have two groups of text: the one before the comma, and the one after the comma: (^$),(^$). $1, $2, $3 (etc.) function as placeholders in the Replace field, so you simply put them where you want the groups of text found to go in the replacement string: $1, $2. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 29 '15 at 22:14
  • Thanks for that explanation! I knew I was not getting the concept of how the Find/Change works. I'll try this and see what I can do. – JeremyH Dec 29 '15 at 22:19
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    Honestly, I would cheat. Replace all the commas with comma-space, and then do another S/R for double spaces. Very quick and no variables involved. – Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum Dec 30 '15 at 3:21
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I worked out the solution thanks to Janus Bahs Jacquet's comment:

Using the GREP option in Find/Change I entered "(,)([\l\u])" in the Find field. The first set of parentheses searches for a comma and the second looks for any letter, which I used because it will not match to a whitespace.

In Change I entered ", $2" which is a comma, space to be inserted, and a placeholder ("$2") that refers to "([\l\u])" in the Find field. The placeholder keeps any letter that immediately followed the comma.

Now that I get the concept, the online documentation seems much clearer. Thanks!

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    You don't have to put the comma in parentheses—parentheses mark groups of text that you intend to use again in the replacement field (i.e., text that varies), and a comma is just a comma. So to make it even simpler, you could do just “,(\S)”, where \S is the escaped GREP character for ‘anything that is not a space character’, and then replace it with “, $1”. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 31 '15 at 3:46
  • @JanusBahsJacquet wouldnt it be easier just to match a forward lookup and replace by , – joojaa Dec 31 '15 at 9:01
  • @joojaa I don't know about easier… equally easy, I'd say. (The reason I rarely do lookaheads and lookbehinds is that I somehow manage to forget the proper syntax in about 15 seconds, no matter how many times I look it up.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 31 '15 at 9:02

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