Hello, I've come across a major issue with my knowledge of Word - I'm trying to copy all words in one document that are in quotation marks so I can paste them into a new document, hopefully having in the other document just the dialogue of this thing I've done.

Thanks in advance!

Update: I have tried using the Select Text with Similar Formatting option (similar to all text in speech marks), but it just selects everything, the "" not counting as formatting!

Now I'm just hoping for a workaround...MS Word not having thought of this particular requirement!

Thanks...

Hi,

Try using double quotes, so that the first pair a use for the find and the second pair I used for the text itself.

Hope this helps.

Hi, I tried that - by highlighting one block of dialogue which was double-quoted (""blah blah blah"", " " blah blah blah " ", ' " blah blah blah " ') but it still highlighted every last thing in the document... Did I do it wrong or something? Thanks for you help, by the way, the problem is pretty frustrating!

Hi, Jophassa. There's a trick to this, but it's not to complicated.
In order to identify the quoted text, you first need to follow the following step, provided on the MVPS site:

First make sure “Replace straight quotes with Smart quotes” is ticked, on the “AutoFormat As You Type” tab under Word Options/Proofing/ Autocorrect.

Then replace " with " (all quotation marks with themselves), which will replace any straight quotes in the document with smart quotes.


Your “Find What” text needs to be:
(“)(*)(”)
Note that the quotes must be smart quotes: you can paste them from the document into the “Find what:” box.


This last part is crucial: copy and paste the open and close quotes from your document in the first and thrid set of parentheses. The asterisk in the second set stands for "any characters," so it will copy anything in-between the quotes.


Choose Reading Highlight to highlight them all, or simply Find All to select them all. Now, transfer focus to the main document without deselecting them, by clicking o the title bar of the document or pressing Ctrl+Tab. Copy the selected quotes with Ctrl+C or your normal mouse path, adn paste to your new document.


Have fun,
Ulodesk