Looking to remove all page breaks from a document or replace them with column breaks perhaps? Curious if tabs are lurking somewhere they shouldn’t be? Find out here how to search for invisible control characters in your Pages documents on Mac, iPhone and iPad ⤓ — and how to replace them, with other control characters even.
First, the Straw Last
Do you insert the straw after adding water to the yerba, or before? Should the bombilla go into the calabash first perhaps — before the tea even?
Which order ever you choose, the first thing that the delicious mate meets in the straw is — a sieve. The bombilla is no mere straw. It’s a clever filter keeping back even tiny tea leaves with a mesh of metal at the tip.
In Pages, you sip your documents through a mesh and straw as well, filters that quietly strain out control and formatting characters. You can’t ordinarily see them, but you still use the sieve to find and replace them:
How to Find and Replace Invisible Control Characters in Pages
Time needed: 2 minutes
To search for and potentially replace invisible control characters in an Apple Pages document on Mac, iPhone and iPad:
- Open the Find or Find & Replace dialog in Pages.
Here’s how: Select Edit | Find | Find… from the menu or press Command F on a Mac; select Find from the three dots menu button on iPhone and iPad.
Show, don’t search: On macOS, Pages can also make formatting characters visible for a quick overview. - Type the following special character sequences to find the corresponding control characters over Find:
\t— tab\n— carriage return\p— page break\i— line break\c— column break
Example: Type\i\tto find line breaks followed directly by a tab, for instance. - To replace: Enter the text you want to use as a replacement over Replace.
No “Replace”: If you do not see the Replace field, click the settings gear (Mac) or magnifying glass (iPhone and iPad) button and choose Find & Replace.
- Use the Find the next match. and Find the previous match. buttons to navigate results.
Their word: Apple include information on searching for formatting characters in the Pages User Guide.
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How to Find and Replace Invisible Control Characters in Pages: FAQ
Can I find control characters in Pages online at iCloud.com?
No.
With Pages in a browser at iCloud.com, you cannot search for or replace control characters.
Can I use the special character sequences for control characters In “Replace”?
Yes.
Using the escaped character sequences in the Replace field will insert the corresponding symbol.
Example: If you search for \i\t and replace with \i, line breaks followed by a tab will be replaced with only a line break (while the tab is deleted).
Are the character sequences for invisibles case sensitive?
Yes.
The character sequences only work with lowercase characters.
Example: \i finds line breaks while \I will find a backspace followed by an uppercase I (\I) in the text.
How can I find \i, \n, etc. in a Pages document?
To find the character sequences ‘\t’, ‘\n’, ‘\p’ etc. in document with Pages:
- Search for the uppercase version of the character sequence with Match Case disabled.
Here’s how: Click the settings gear or magnifying glass icon and make sure Match Case is not checked.
Example: Searching for\Iwill find both \I and \I in documents.
Can I search for control characters just to highlight them?
Yes.
Where Pages cannot display invisible characters, you can search for them individually to highlight their positions.
(Tested with Pages 15 on macOS Tahoe 26 and iOS 26; first published March 2026)