#1
|
|||
|
|||
Problem when changing single-quotes to double-quotes
When converting a document from British English to American English I ran into the following problem with the quote marks: all attempts to automate the change (Search&Replace or by a Macro) resulted in every opening quote being converted to a closing one!
Manually typing an opening quote works ok. By doing the S&R conversion as single-quote to TWO double-quotes I got a closing quote-opening quote pair in the document. Deleting the first one (the closing quote) resulted in the remaining one immediately changing from opening to closing. As the document I'm working with has 470 opening single-quotes I'm not very keen on doing the job one quote-character a time; so all help will be appreciated! _Lup Note: LibreOffice did the conversion with no immediate problems. But later the converted document caused Grammarly (A grammar check program) to crash(multiple tries!); so that solution is not viable. Same problem on to two PCs. HP Envy and Elitebook, 64bit, Windows 10 Pro, Office 365 (64 bit on the Envy and 32 bit on the Elitebook) Last edited by Lup; 02-09-2020 at 09:14 AM. Reason: Forgot the system info! |
#2
|
||||
|
||||
What happens if you change the language and then do a search and replace to find a quote and replace it with a quote (ie. let the smart quotes option work out the direction of each quote)
__________________
Andrew Lockton Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Quote:
Maybe it's worth adding that I have the Swedish versions of both Windows and Office. _Lup |
#4
|
||||
|
||||
Are you saying you are converting a single to two doubles?
That is ' to "" Then you are deleting the first one That is "" becomes " Why the two steps?
__________________
Andrew Lockton Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Naturally I tried a one-to-one conversion first! The one-to-two conversion Was just an experiment to see if anything would change; and interestingly enough, the second character of the pair produced was a correct opening quote!
That was, however, a dead end. Deleting the erroneous first quote character resulted in the second one immediately changing to a closing one. _Lup |
#6
|
||||
|
||||
I don't know anything about the Swedish language.
It looks like when you apply the Swedish language to text, Microsoft have configured the software to put all directional quotes in the same closing direction. If I have a paragraph with the spell check in English I get opening and closing quotes (ie two different directions). If I have a paragraph with the spell check in Swedish, all the quotes I get are 'closing' quotes.
__________________
Andrew Lockton Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
True, but I have the spell checker set to English and in normal typing, there is no problem.
But, certainly, it's tempting to suspect some interaction from the underlying Swedish Word is the culprit. I'll have a look if changing the display language of Word helps. _Lup |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
No, changing over to English as Word display language made no difference. But, of course, it's still a "Swedish" version of Office that is the basis...
Guess I'll have to do the conversion "by hand" this time. No fun! _Lup |
#9
|
||||
|
||||
The display language in Office shouldn't cause any trouble. I am running a US English installation of Office with Swedish set as the default proofing language.
__________________
Stefan Blom Microsoft Word MVP Microsoft 365 apps for business Windows 11 Professional |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
The problem is that I have exactly the opposite set-up! Swedish installation with English set as the proofing language!
On the 64 bit installation, I could change the display langue of Word so it looked like an English version, but that didn't help. I guess there is some difference in the internal logic between the English and Swedish versions and that logic stays unchanged when you change the display language. But that's pure guessing! _Lup |
#11
|
||||
|
||||
And I suppose changing to dumb (non-directional) quotes is out of the question?
__________________
Andrew Lockton Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia |
#12
|
|||
|
|||
Quote:
BUT, your suggestion pointed me the right way! Here is a way to solve this conundrum: -First turn off "Straight quotes to smart quotes" -Then perform the conversion from single to double opening quotes with S&R "Replace all". (Important to copy actual opening single and double quote characters into S&R!) -Switch "Straigt to Smart" back on -Perform the conversion for the closing quotes. A bit messy because the need of avoiding genitive and contraction single apostrophes. Thanks Guessed! You saved my day! _Lup |
#13
|
||||
|
||||
Quote:
__________________
Stefan Blom Microsoft Word MVP Microsoft 365 apps for business Windows 11 Professional |
#14
|
|||
|
|||
Will try, but not today!
_Lup |
#15
|
|||
|
|||
Quote:
_Lup |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
How to replace straight quotes with smart quotes in existing document | PABwriter | Word | 4 | 05-27-2016 03:36 PM |
Macro to find nested double quotes in document | Arg0nawt | Word VBA | 2 | 05-03-2016 06:13 PM |
Changing dumb quotes to smart quotes | Reisende | Word | 2 | 05-02-2016 08:56 PM |
Changing single-quotes to double-quotes | Bobosmite | Word | 5 | 04-15-2013 06:40 AM |
Changing the Double Quotes | kosky | Word | 1 | 05-24-2012 04:20 PM |