Search and Replace

[Jackie]

Does anyone know if I can use search and replace to find text which is
shown in quotation marks, then make it bold?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Does anyone know if I can use search and replace to find text which is
shown in quotation marks, then make it bold?

Yes, someone knows. (Sorry, couldn't help it! <g>)

Use a wildcard search, explained at
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. That is, click the More
button in the Replace dialog and check the "Use wildcards" box.

If your document uses only straight quotation marks, then the Find
expression is simply

("*")

and the Replace expression is

\1

and press Ctrl+B in the Replace box so the label under it says "Font: Bold".
Then click the Replace All button.

If the document uses curly quotes -- what Word calls "smart quotes" although
they sometimes aren't so smart -- you can use those characters in the Find
expression either by copy/paste from the document or by typing in the ASCII
codes: hold the Alt key while typing on the number pad 0147 for an opening
quote and 0148 for a closing quote. That will give you the Find expression

("*")

Finally, if the document has a mixture of straight and curly quotes, you can
try changing them all in one go with the Find expression

([""]*[""])

If there are any unmatched pairs of quotes in the document, though, you
could wind up with a very large chunk of non-quotation text in bold. Just
remember that Undo will bring you back to the original state so you can fix
the incorrect quotation mark and try again.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Generally speaking, " in the Find dialog will find either straight or curly
quotes.

Does anyone know if I can use search and replace to find text which is
shown in quotation marks, then make it bold?

Yes, someone knows. (Sorry, couldn't help it! <g>)

Use a wildcard search, explained at
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. That is, click the More
button in the Replace dialog and check the "Use wildcards" box.

If your document uses only straight quotation marks, then the Find
expression is simply

("*")

and the Replace expression is

\1

and press Ctrl+B in the Replace box so the label under it says "Font: Bold".
Then click the Replace All button.

If the document uses curly quotes -- what Word calls "smart quotes" although
they sometimes aren't so smart -- you can use those characters in the Find
expression either by copy/paste from the document or by typing in the ASCII
codes: hold the Alt key while typing on the number pad 0147 for an opening
quote and 0148 for a closing quote. That will give you the Find expression

("*")

Finally, if the document has a mixture of straight and curly quotes, you can
try changing them all in one go with the Find expression

([""]*[""])

If there are any unmatched pairs of quotes in the document, though, you
could wind up with a very large chunk of non-quotation text in bold. Just
remember that Undo will bring you back to the original state so you can fix
the incorrect quotation mark and try again.

 

[Jay Freedman]

At least in my recent experiments in Word 2003, that's true in the regular
Find but not in a wildcard search. In a document with mixed straight and
curly quotes, the " character in a wildcard Find will match only the
straight quotes.

This isn't the only difference. For example, wildcard searches are always
case-sensitive, and there's the whole issue of caret-symbols like ^p that
aren't valid in wildcards. So this wrinkle doesn't surprise me at all.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP

Generally speaking, " in the Find dialog will find either straight or
curly quotes.

Does anyone know if I can use search and replace to find text which
is shown in quotation marks, then make it bold?

Yes, someone knows. (Sorry, couldn't help it! <g>)

Use a wildcard search, explained at
http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm. That is, click
the More button in the Replace dialog and check the "Use wildcards"
box.

If your document uses only straight quotation marks, then the Find
expression is simply

("*")

and the Replace expression is

\1

and press Ctrl+B in the Replace box so the label under it says
"Font: Bold". Then click the Replace All button.

If the document uses curly quotes -- what Word calls "smart quotes"
although they sometimes aren't so smart -- you can use those
characters in the Find expression either by copy/paste from the
document or by typing in the ASCII codes: hold the Alt key while
typing on the number pad 0147 for an opening quote and 0148 for a
closing quote. That will give you the Find expression

("*")

Finally, if the document has a mixture of straight and curly quotes,
you can try changing them all in one go with the Find expression

([""]*[""])

If there are any unmatched pairs of quotes in the document, though,
you could wind up with a very large chunk of non-quotation text in
bold. Just remember that Undo will bring you back to the original
state so you can fix the incorrect quotation mark and try again.

 

[Jackie]

Thanks for this. I don't know if I'm missing something but it doesn't
work. I get a message saying "The replace with text contains a group
number which is out of range". My doc is all straight quotes.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Thanks for this. I don't know if I'm missing something but it doesn't
work. I get a message saying "The replace with text contains a group
number which is out of range". My doc is all straight quotes.

In that case, use the expression

("*")

Be sure to include the parentheses -- the error message you got indicates
that you left them out.

 

[Jackie]

I did leave them out - thanks for your help, this works beautifully.