French (dagger) to English (curly) quotation marks

[Catherine]

I have been attempting for a long time to find how I can automatically change
French dagger quotation marks to English curly quotation marks in a French
document: « needs to be " (in curly form), but find-replace will not change
the quotation marks. The only way that I have found so far consists in
changing the document's language from French to English (select all, tools,
language, English), making the changes in the quotation marks with
find-replace, and then setting the language again to French. I would like my
French document to insert curly quotation marks automatically. If anyone has
a solution, I would be most grateful to read it. Thank you.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The guillemets seem to be standard for every flavor of French I tried (I had
thought that perhaps if I selected Canadian French or some African version,
I could get curly quotes, but so far I have not succeeded). I did find,
however, that even if I have French (France) selected as the language, I can
still get curly quotes using the built-in keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+`, " for
an opening double quote and Ctrl+', " for a closing double quote. You might
try that.

 

[Catherine]

Thanks, Suzanne. I have also tried to use different versions of French, from
Canadian to African, and nothing has worked so far. I created shortcuts for
curly quotes but still could not change them in find and replace. I will try
your suggestion, though I am not sure how it works

 

[Klaus Linke]

[...] but still could not change them in find and replace. [...]


Hi Catherine,

If you turn off "AutoFormat as you type > Change straight quotes to typographic
quotes", Find/Replace should work.

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This is explained more fully in
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/InsertSpecChars.htm. Press Ctrl and the `
(grave accent) key simultaneously, release, and then press the " key
(Shift+Apostrophe) for left double quotes. For right double quotes, press
Ctrl+Apostrophe, release, then press Shift+Apostrophe.

 

[Catherine]

Many thanks Suzanne and Klaus! I had actually created shortcuts for the
opening and closing curly quotes (ctrl + ' for opening quotes, and crtl + "
for closing quotes). It's the removal of the autocorrect feature that finally
did the trick.