How do I remove ASCII "Null" from a Microsoft Word 2010 document?

Question

I have OCRed a document. The OCR software has created lots of NULL characters in the finalized Word 2010 document. I know that because I have found this converter, which has transformed one of the questionable strings into 122 117 110 101 104 NULL 32 109 101 110 100).

I have a few search-and-replace operations I'd like to perform. Null prevents me from doing this.

How do I find all NULL characters in from this document?

Tried so far in the "Search" field:

^NULL
^000 (ASCII)
^u0, ^u00, ^u000, ^u0000 (Unicode)

I don't mind if the solution requires me to use OpenOffice/LibreOffice or VBA.

More about NUL:

Unrelated questions:

How can I remove unicode characters in a Microsoft Word document?

You could copy and paste the text to notepad. If the NULLs persist then use tr on the text document. (E.g. ` tr "0x000" " " to replace NULL with a white space). — Hennes, Mar 13 '13 at 15:33
@hennes What tool should I replace it with? How do I enter tr in Notepad? — user 99572 is fine, Mar 13 '13 at 15:42
Tr is a separate program (TRanslate). It should be installed by default on OS/X. If you are using windows instead you can download it from http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ But before you try it, first copy it from winword.exe, paste it to notepad and save it. That is probably enough. — Hennes, Mar 13 '13 at 15:47

user 99572 is fine · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-15T21:08:35.727

2

I've figured it out eventually.

NULL is ad in hexadecimal code (at least according to this website: http://www.string-functions.com/string-hex.aspx).

adis 173 in unicode (according to here: http://easycalculation.com/hex-converter.php).

When I search in Word for ^u173, it works like a charm.

edited Jan 15 '16 at 21:08

answered Mar 13 '13 at 16:46

user 99572 is fine

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Interesting, I get a ų when I enter this in my word 2010. – MDMoore313 Mar 13 '13 at 17:08
@MDMoore313 Funny, I get the same as you when I do a Unicode shortcut (Alt-X or Alt-C). But when I do a Alt+0173, I get NUL, which in Word displays similar to a hyphen. – user 99572 is fine Mar 13 '13 at 19:28

MDMoore313 · Answer 2 · 2013-03-13T15:43:59.997

0

Try holding down the ALT key, typing 255 on the number pad, and releasing the ALT key.

Update

Try this:

There is a symbol which looks like ...

N
U
L

... which is U+2400 (press and hold Alt while you type 9216 - or in recent 
versions of Word type 2400 and press Alt+X)

Taken from http://www.wordbanter.com/showthread.php?t=78318. I can confirm it worked for me, but I don't know if this is they symbol your referring to.

edited Mar 13 '13 at 15:43

answered Mar 13 '13 at 15:24

MDMoore313

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0xFF ('ÿ') is quite different than 0x00 (NUL). – Adam Caudill Mar 13 '13 at 15:28
Strange, everywhere else in windows it shows blank. This used to be the null in older versions. – MDMoore313 Mar 13 '13 at 15:34
Didn't work. But I found out eventually - posted my own answer. Thx for your trouble – user 99572 is fine Mar 13 '13 at 16:19

How do I remove ASCII "Null" from a Microsoft Word 2010 document?

2 Answers2