Deletion of Unicode 202F ("narrow no break space") in project

Question

A project doing NT final checking has many 202F characters. However, attempts to replace these characters with ordinary space 0020 are not working. One can delete the character, hit space bar, check that the character is 0020 - and then at some subsequent point, all the characters change back to 202F. I am totally mystified by this behaviour. Your help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Are you using P7 or P8? Paratext treats 202F as basically a space, but the program seems erratic in its treatment. Do these spaces occur inside words or between words? Paratext normally reduces a double space to a single space, so if a regular space occurs before 202F, the 202F should be deleted. If it is not deleted right away, try to switch between views. It may therefore work to add a regular space before 202F to get rid of the 202F. If the 202F occurs before a regular space, that regular space will be deleted and you are back to 202F.
Have you tried to replace all 202F by regular spaces in the Search and Replace window? When I tried it, the program will ask you if you really want to change USFM markers. When I say yes, it changes all spaces including 202F to regular spaces in my Paratext 8 and 7 test projects. As far as I know, Paratext does not use 202F anywhere, so how they got there in the first place is not clear. Maybe imported from a different program?

Comments

Many thanks, Iver+Larsen. This advice, about proceeding past the warning message that a USFM marker would be affected, proved to be the vital information needed to get this to work. Much appreciate your help.

Answer 2

Is this in Paratext 8 or 7.6?
Can you provide a Paratext backup to look into it?

Comments

I'm having the same problem using PT9. I've tried all the ideas Iver suggests but nothing works. One difference; when I try to use Search and Replace it says "No matches found" even though it's there in the text and Basic Checks reports it as an error.