choosing first tab char of line in .txt file and repalce it by new line char in notepad++

Question

I have a .txt file like this:

ali is a writer
ahmad is an instructor

Note: Space between words are created by Tab
and need to change it to this form:

ali
is a writer
ahmad
is an instructor

how can I tell notepad++ to retrieve those first tabbed words and place the rest of the sentence in the next line?

Answer 1

Corrected:
OK, I got it now.

Ensure that the 'Regular Expression' is selected.
Place "^([^\t]*)\t([^\r])" (without quotes) in find box.
Place "\1\r\2" (without quotes) in replace box.
Move cursor to start of file.
Select 'Replace All'

Answer 2

First, I can't get it to match regular expression tabs, so just do an "extended" find replace, replacing "\t" (tab) with " " (space). We'll undo this later to get you your desired result.

After that, change the Search mode to "Regular expression"

In the "find what" box, enter this, without quotes. Note the space at the end. "(^[a-zA-Z]*) ".

"^" means the start of the line. "[a-zA-Z]" means any letters from a-z, capitalized or not. "*" means any number of repetitions of the preceding thing (the a-z thing). The parentheses are used to remember what was found and re-use it in the "replace with box".

In the "replace with" box, enter this, without quotes: "\1\r\n"

"\1" repeats what it found between the parentheses from the "find what" box. Unfortunately, this will also repeat the space. We'll deal with that later. "\r\n" is a new line (carriage return, line feed, which is how Windows does a new line)

Click Replace All. That should basically do what you want.

Now to fix the little things:

Switch back to "extended" mode. Replace " " with "\t" to change those spaces back to tab.

Now, to fix that trailing tab after ali and ahmad:

Find what: "\t$" ($ means end of line) Replace with: "" (nothing)

Then I think you're done!

Does this do what you want?