Problem with punctuation and older word files

[Dave]

I have an odd problem. When I open some of my older word files, apostrophes
show as "=" signs, and other odd punctation errors. When I went to delete
them, I tried a global find and replace, but these symbols didn't behave like
a single characters. Any ideas?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The document was probably created in WordPerfect using the WP Typographic
Symbols font for quotes, dashes, etc. You should be able to F&R, and indeed
(short of installing the font, which just defers the problem), this is the
only solution.