You missed the important term "wildcard." Click on "more" to expand the F&R
dialog and check the "Use wildcards" box. Then use this as your search term:

space{2,}

(where "space" represents one press of the Spacebar)

and replace with ^t

For more, see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/UsingWildcards.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Mary Lee" wrote in message
...
F&R wasn't working well because the space strings were so long in some
places. I tried replacing 5 spaces at a time with nothing but it started
to
get skewed enough that I was losing sight of where I was going.

I will play with the Alt+Click thing - what you said makes sense.
--
Thanks!
Mary Lee


"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Alt+click will not kick in if you Alt first and then press the button
firmly; it's not till you let the button up that it registers as a
click.
But a better way to get rid of extra spaces is to use a wildcard F&R to
search for two or more spaces and replace with a tab.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Mary Lee" wrote in message
...
AHHH!!! Now I remember!! I have to find a way to temporarily disable
Answers.com (which I use all the time) because you have to Alt+Click
to
begin
Alt+drag. I use Alt+click a whole lot more, but when I need Alt+ drag
I
sure
need it! Thanks for the reminder, Luc!
--
Thanks!
Mary Lee


"Luc" wrote:

Mary Lee,
Have you tried Alt+dragging which allows you to select text
vertically?
Luc
"Mary Lee" schreef in bericht
...
I just remembered that it was not converting text to tables that
these
forgotten keystrokes could do - it was a key combination so that
when
you
select a portion of text on a line and then drag down, only that
which
is
directly below the selected text continues to be selected, rather
than
the
margin-to-margin selection that would normally happen. That would
make
the
task of eliminating all those unwanted spaces relatively simple.
--
Thanks!
Mary Lee


"Mary Lee" wrote:

I am working in Word 2002. I have a many-page list that goes into
a
manual.
The columns of the list have been set up by using spaces. I once
ran
across a
surprisingly simple key set for turning text into tables in
Word -
not
the
usual Convert Text to Tables function - but I can't remember what
it
is,
or
if it only works when tabs are in place.

Does anyone know of a more efficient way to get this into a table
than a
row-by-row deleting of the extra spaces and putting tabs where I
need
them so
that I can convert this thing the usual way?

Thanks
--
Thanks!
Mary Lee