Let's say the content of a cell is something like this:
<tagabc</tag <tagdef</tag

And let's also say that strings "abc" and "def" are a different font than
the tags. Let's say the tags are Times New Roman while the strings between
tags are Arial.

When I do a find and replace to delete the space between "</tag <tag", the
font of my strings changes from Arial to Times New Roman.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

Using Excel 2003.