finding and replacing quotes

[Guest]

We have thousands of "smart" quote marks enclosing portions of text in cell enties in Excel. The quote marks are from the original Word document we brought the text in from. If we try to find and replace the quote marks, Excel only finds straight quotes, not the smart (66 and 99 style) quotes. The find and replace dialog box will not allow us to paste with a right-click, so we cannot get a smart quote in the find area, no matter what we do. All these smart quotes need to be changed to apostrophes. Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this? This spreadsheet is now 20 columns wide times 500 rows long times 15 separate sheet tabs, so this is no small task!

 

[mudraker]

Instead of trying to use the right click try using one of the keyboar
Isert short cut keys

Ctrl + Insert
or
Ctrl +

 

[RagDyer]

Don't know how well this might display in the NG,
But char(147) = ( " ) = open quotes
Char(148) = ( " ) = close quotes

You can enter these into the "Find What" box by:
Holding down <Alt>, and typing "0147" or "0148" (no quotes) using the num
keypad, *not* the number keys under the function keys.
--

HTH,

RD
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Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit!
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We have thousands of "smart" quote marks enclosing portions of text in cell
enties in Excel. The quote marks are from the original Word document we
brought the text in from. If we try to find and replace the quote marks,
Excel only finds straight quotes, not the smart (66 and 99 style) quotes.
The find and replace dialog box will not allow us to paste with a
right-click, so we cannot get a smart quote in the find area, no matter what
we do. All these smart quotes need to be changed to apostrophes. Does
anyone have any ideas on how to do this? This spreadsheet is now 20 columns
wide times 500 rows long times 15 separate sheet tabs, so this is no small
task!

 

[Guest]

Thanks guys!!! Both ideas work equally well. <Ctrl>+v inserts the smart quote from the clipboard, and the <Alt>+<ASCII character number> method displays the smart quote after entering the ASCII code. You have saved us many hours of work! Thank you!!

 

[Jer11eng]

I have a variant of this problem. I have a Word document using curly quotes (66 and 99). I want to replace each 66 quote with a 66 quote plus a space. In the replace menu I insert ASCII code 0147 in the find box, and ASCII code 0147 and a space in the replace box. Word then finds all the 66 quotes, and replaces them with 99 quotes plus a space. My file is set for UK English. How do I get Word to replace a 66 code with a 66 code plus a space?