Replace existing dumb quotes with smart quotes

john_h · General User Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 15

I have a document prepared in a text editor, with regular quotes rather than smart quotes. I'd like to replace all the regular quotes with smart quotes in OOo v2.

In Another Inferior Overpriced Word Processor (TM), I could do this using find and replace - regular quote in the find box, regular quote in the replace box, and the all quotes are replaced with the appropriate opening or closing smart quote. Tried this in OOo and it didn't work - any suggestions how I can change the quotes at once?

Smart quotes are appearing fine when I type new text, BTW.

RGB · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 4:08 am Post subject:

The opening quotes usually comes with a space before them, and the closing ones with a character instead: if you do a search-replace using space+normal quote, and replacing it by space+custom quote, you will be able to replace the opening quotes, then, doing a search-replace using normal quotes -> custom quotes, you will be able to replace the closing ones.

cmwalden · Newbie Joined: 02 Dec 2007 Posts: 1

I found a combination of search and replace that works pretty well. It would be nice to have an option to do this automatically using the same logic as the custom-quote while you type. I'm not sure what that would take. In the mean time maybe this will help.

1. Go to the first set of quotes that you can find and manually retype them to get the raw quote characters you will need.
2. Copy the opening quote.
3. Do ctrl-F for Find and enter [space]" as was suggested above for the find. In the replace put the quote character that you copied preceded by a [space]. (If you leave off the space in your replace statement you make spaces disappear.)
4. Replace all.
5. Repeat the search and replace but put \<" in the find section. Remove the trailing space from the replace statement Click the More Options button and check Regular Expression. (The \<" searches for an quotes that come at the beginning of a word, which finds the ones at the beginning of a line.)
6. Replace all.

That will replace your opening quotes for the most part. Now for the closing quotes:
1. Copy your closing quote character and go back into find.
2. Change the \<" to \>" to look for quotes at the end of a word.
3. Change your replace quote to the correct closing quote.
4. Replace all.
5. Change the find to "[space] and add a trailing space to the closing quote in the replace.
6. Uncheck Regular Expression option.
7. Replace All.

You may have a few stray quotes that need to be replaced but they can be found easily with a search.

If you need to look for single quotes the steps are the same using singles in stead of double.

It's more work than it should be, but it will help you get them all.

Bhikkhu Pesala · Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2007 8:50 pm Post subject:

There is no need to use Find and Replace if you text is not yet formatted with styles. Select all, Apply the default paragraph style, Format, Autoformat,

Apply to change all of the quotes to smart quotes. Then apply body text style if you wish.

Tools, Autocorrect, Custom Quotes, Replace must be on, and the paragraph style must be "Default."
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BillP · Super User Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 2702

Bhikkhu Pesala · Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:48 pm Post subject:

Here, it applies the style, "First line indent."
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BillP · Super User Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 2702