How do I remove all non-ASCII characters with regex and Notepad++?

Regex Expression Notepad++Non Ascii-Characters

Regex Problem Overview

I searched a lot, but nowhere is it written how to remove non-ASCII characters from Notepad++.

I need to know what command to write in find and replace (with picture it would be great).

If I want to make a white-list and bookmark all the ASCII words/lines so non-ASCII lines would be unmarked
If the file is quite large and can't select all the ASCII lines and just want to select the lines containing non-ASCII characters...

Regex Solutions

Solution 1 - Regex

This expression will search for non-ASCII values:

[^\x00-\x7F]+

Tick off 'Search Mode = Regular expression', and click Find Next.

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3203190/regex-any-ascii-character

Solution 2 - Regex

In Notepad++, if you go to menu Search → Find characters in range → Non-ASCII Characters (128-255) you can then step through the document to each non-ASCII character.

Be sure to tick off "Wrap around" if you want to loop in the document for all non-ASCII characters.

Solution 3 - Regex

In addition to the answer by ProGM, in case you see characters in boxes like NUL or ACK and want to get rid of them, those are ASCII control characters (0 to 31), you can find them with the following expression and remove them:

[\x00-\x1F]+

In order to remove all non-ASCII AND ASCII control characters, you should remove all characters matching this regex:

[^\x1F-\x7F]+

Solution 4 - Regex

To remove all non-ASCII characters, you can use following replacement: [^\x00-\x7F]+

To highlight characters, I recommend using the Mark function in the search window: this highlights non-ASCII characters and put a bookmark in the lines containing one of them

If you want to highlight and put a bookmark on the ASCII characters instead, you can use the regex [\x00-\x7F] to do so.

Cheers

Solution 5 - Regex

To keep new lines:

First select a character for new line... I used #.
Select replace option, extended.
input \n replace with #
Hit Replace All

Select Replace option Regular Expression.
Input this : [^\x20-\x7E]+
Keep Replace With Empty
Hit Replace All

Now, Select Replace option Extended and Replace # with \n

:) now, you have a clean ASCII file ;)

Solution 6 - Regex

Another good trick is to go into UTF8 mode in your editor so that you can actually see these funny characters and delete them yourself.

Solution 7 - Regex

Another way...

Install the Text FX plugin if you don't have it already
Go to the TextFX menu option -> zap all non printable characters to #. It will replace all invalid chars with 3 # symbols
Go to Find/Replace and look for ###. Replace it with a space.

This is nice if you can't remember the regex or don't care to look it up. But the regex mentioned by others is a nice solution as well.

Solution 8 - Regex

Click on View/Show Symbol/Show All Character - to show the [SOH] characters in the file Click on the [SOH] symbol in the file CTRL=H to bring up the replace Leave the 'Find What:' as is Change the 'Replace with:' to the character of your choosing (comma,semicolon, other...) Click 'Replace All' Done and done!

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Texh	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Regex	ProGM	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Regex	Anon Y. Mous	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Regex	brunorey	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Regex	Jean-Francois T.	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Regex	TooGeeky	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Regex	Gidon Wise	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Regex	goku_da_master	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Regex	RipVduB	View Answer on Stackoverflow