The World of Computing and Solutions

Question: is there a way in Microsoft Word 2003 to search for only curly quotes, or straight quotes?

Answer: the solution is plain and weird. In the find dialog, click the More button and then check the box titled, Use Wildcards. Enter a regular double-quote in the Find what box. When Use Wildcards is checked, it will only find the regular, straight quotes.

To find the curly quotes, leave the Use Wildcards box checked and enter this in the Find what box: [“”]. That is, open square bracket, left curly quote, right curly quote, close square bracket. To enter the left curly quote, make sure that NumLock is on, hold down the Alt Key, tap out the numbers 0147 on the keypad (not the top-row numbers) and release the Alt Key. For the right curly quote, again hold down the Alt Key, and enter 0148 and release the Alt Key. Or you may find it easier to just copy and paste the curly quites from the document itself. While in the Use Wildcards mode, Word searches for any characters found within the square brackets, so you will find both left and right curly quotes this way.