Quote marks

[ChuckH]

How do you convert the quote marks to straight quote marks in a saved
document as text? We have to file stories to a site that takes only text
files. The quotes do convert in Word 2003 and disappear when the text file
is received at the site. Is there any way to turn off "smart quotes."

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I'm not sure I have fully understood, but
a. you can stop Word using smart quotes in the first place by unchecking
the relevant option in Tools|Autocorrect|"Autoformat" and "Autoformat as you
type", if that is what you want
b. You could record a macro that used Edit|Replace to replace each type of
smart quote with a straight quote. You would need to uncheck the Autoformat
options as above before running this (or perhaps you could record that in
the macro too, and switch them back on again after if that is what you want.
In this case, I would
- save the file in .doc format first
- then save as a plain text file and re-open it, because that gets rid of
things such as headers and text boxes that may not be updated correctly with
a simple macro
- switch off the autoformat options
- do the find/replace operations
- switch any required autoformat options back on

Peter Jamieson