I'm trying to use Find and Replace to find all instances of a space before a closing quotation mark (like “this ”), and delete the space. But Word says it can't find any, even though they are present. It can find: individual spaces, individual close quotes, individual open quotes, open quotes followed by a space, and close quotes followed by a space, but it can't find space close quote.

I've tried copying/pasting a space close quote into the Find What box, and even using Unicode characters ^w^u8221, but neither are found. In the Find What box, if I just type space and a quotation mark (i.e., a straight quote), in the manuscript it finds space open quote but not space close quote.

Is there some other way of indicating a space close quote that I haven't thought of?

I hope I am not repeating what you just said but,

In the Find and Replace menu, enter a space and " (specifically what you are wanting to replace) in the Find What box; In the Replace with box, simply enter " then click on "Replace All". It should work.

Perhaps the space is nonbreaking. You should be able to find it if you enter Ctrl+Shift+SpaceBar in the "Find what" box in the Find and Replace dialog box.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks for your reply, JimP. Problem with that is that it finds space open quote and replaces "this" with"this". I need to find space close quote only.

Thanks, Stephan. I have Ctrl+Shift+SpaceBar allocated to a different application so I couldn't use that easily, but from the Special dropdown list I selected Nonbreaking Space (^s) but found none in the document.

If you click the ¶ button on the Home tab, to force the display of nonprinting marks, then what do you see in place of the mysterious space?

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

My computer rebooted last night (Microsoft did some automatic updates), and the problem went away; I was able to find space open quote just fine.

Stephan, I didn't get a chance to try Show/Hide marks, but after the reboot the spaces showed up as normal spaces. I suspect they would have yesterday as well, and that the problem was resolved by the reboot.

Note that if Word was running when Windows restarted automatically following automatic updates, this could have caused problems. Take a look at http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional