If you define a Style for your dialogues (probably a character Style), you could use a wildcard Find/Replace with:
Find = ^0145[!^0145]@[.,\?\!][^0146]
Replace = ^&


and specify your dialogue Style as the replacement Style.

Having done that, you could use an ordinary Find/Replace to look for your content in whatever other Style the rest of your document uses for the body text.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Aha, eureka! It works, that's fantastic guys, thanks so much for your help this will serve me well and will save me a lot of work and a lot of screen staring too. Thanks again, you're a couple of stars!


p.s. if you ever need some writing advice/help just drop me a message, not sure if I will be able to help but I'd give it my full attention.


Cheers fellas!
Rob