Prevent automatic tab insertion or conversion of spaces to tabs

Question

Google Docs has a "feature" that sometimes converts four spaces to one tab.

Copying and pasting text does not solve this problem, because the spaces in that text are converted to tabs automatically.

Is there a way to turn this off?

As a workaround, I replaced every space with a non-breaking space. That is, I replaced Unicode U+0020 with Unicode U+00A0. — jkdev, Apr 26 '17 at 02:29
Another workaround is to upload the content as a new document rather than pasting into an existing one; no conversion is applied to uploads. You can then paste from the new Google Doc into an existing one without the conversion happening. — Nathan Long, Sep 26 '18 at 11:55
Also here: https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/106582/how-do-i-prevent-google-docs-from-changing-some-spaces-to-tabs-when-pasting-fr — Tim Abell, May 31 '23 at 11:06

score 14 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 29 '17 at 00:13

14

No way to turn of that I know of. So annoying.

You can work-around using normal copy-paste, then a search-and-replace.

Copy-Paste you content into the Google Doc
In a text-editor, enter a tab character then cut it to your clipboard
Back in Google Docs, highlight the content you wish to fix
Hit Ctrl + H to open Find and replace dialogue
Paste the tab character into the Find field
Insert 4 space characters into the Replace with field
Click Replace all

answered Nov 29 '17 at 00:13

zero-day

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If you're having trouble with typing a tab into the **Find** field, turn on regular expressions and use `\t` – nonzero Jan 22 '18 at 01:20
The drivenotepad plugin acts like a standard text editor (chrome browser only) – Dustin Soodak Feb 15 '18 at 22:58
Nope, that doesn't work either... the inserted spaces are then, happily recombined into tabs... goddamn google !!! – AlexD Aug 07 '21 at 01:29

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 25 '19 at 13:48

7

The approach that caused me the least headaches was to replace all spaces by another character (say underscore) in the original text, copy/paste it, then replace the underscore using find+replace. This was in Google slides.

answered Apr 25 '19 at 13:48

micans

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 25 '20 at 11:28

2

i use cmd+shift+v (edit -> paste without formatting) to paste.
The spaces are not converted to tabs.

answered Sep 25 '20 at 11:28

Philip Clarke

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This seemed to work in some instances, but in other instances spaces are still converted. Unclear when it works and when it doesn't. – Mark Gates Jan 28 '21 at 17:59

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 15 '18 at 23:07

1

I did find one solution: there is a Chrome plugin called "Drive Notepad" which edits google drive files and has an option "Tabs: hard"

answered Feb 15 '18 at 23:07

Dustin Soodak

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Tried it and it seems to work. Only problem is I have to install it in every browser in every computer I use. – Dustin Soodak Nov 19 '18 at 21:01

Prevent automatic tab insertion or conversion of spaces to tabs

4 Answers4