If you search for '' (that is, two straight apostrophes typed into the "Find
what" box), Word will find them. Or you can select them and paste them in
(Ctrl+V); this will cover the eventuality that you're dealing with something
other than opening single quotes. To replace with regular apostrophes, use
^0146 (twice).
Now here's the important part: Before running the Replace operation, go to
Tools | AutoCorrect, select the AutoFormat As You Type tab, and clear the
check box for "Straight quotes with smart quotes." If you don't do that,
Word will replace the opening single quote with an apostrophe and then
immediately correct it back again. Once you've completed the Replace
operation, you can reenable the AutoFormat option.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org
"FOREVER_NEWBIE" wrote in message
...
I found that if you have a word such as "John's" in WORD, and you
replace the apostrophe by 2 apostrophes (you have do this using Search/
Replace) you don't end up with 2 regular apostrophes. You get 2
characters that look like apostrophes, but they are slanted in
opposite directions. I think this is Microsoft Word's way of guessing
what the user wants. (I have Word 2000).
Unfortunately I have already pasted many word documents with this
mistake into a sql server database. I need to correct them. So I
need to do a replace of these special characters by real apostrophes.
The problem is, I don't know what that ASCII code for these characters
are. Maybe the aren't even ASCII, maybe they are Unicode.
Is there any way to find out?
Thanks,