Apostrophe's becoming upside down question marks on the web

[EllenM]

Hello,
We prepare Excel spreadsheets for our IT team, who posts the data on the web
using an Oracle server. They load them into searchable databases.

The majority of apostrophe's look fine on the web. However, from time to
time, an apostrophe will show up as an upside down question mark. All the
apostrophe's look the same in the spreadsheet.

I suspect that this is a character that MS Word generates. (The text often
originates in Word). Is there a way to avoiding this? Like saving the text
in notepad before copying it to the spreadsheets?

As we're working with a third party, we're presently unable to troubleshoot
as we'd like.

Thanks in advance,
Ellen

 

[David Biddulph]

You may want to type the subject "smart quotes" into Word help, and see
whether that does the trick.

 

[EllenM]

Thanks so much, David. We wouldn't know for a while if that's what we need
as it's a process interacting with the IT team, but your suggestion sounds
wonderful.

Ellen

 

[EllenM]

Thanks, David. Ever since we turned the "smart quotes" off, the upside down
question mark disappeared.

Ellen