Solved Word 2016 Search & Replace foreign quotation marks (Guillemets)

[Davexxx]

I have some Italian text which has '<' & '>' (greater than/less than, or Word tags) as quotation marks and which need replacing with respective double Guillemets («»).

However Word 2016 replaces '<' with a double quotation mark '"' rather than a double Guillemet.

I've tried changing the default language to French/Italian, switching off Autocorrect, and entering the characters in search & replace via the Alt/NumLock scheme, but none of these work.

Any suggestions would be welcome. TIA.

Dave.

 

[iko22]

Hello Davexxx, and welcome to Seven Forums

Does the font family (font style) support guillemets/chevrons? Presumably, the original document was typed on a computer, in a font that supported guillemets. But then I am assuming from your question, that the document was transfered to a different computer to read, where the symbols were replaced with the double quotation marks.
It could be that the symbols were replaced because this computer has not yet installed, or has removed, the font that supports the special characters that you require, and you maybe reading the document in a substitute font.

 

[Davexxx]

... Does the font family (font style) support guillemets/chevrons? ...

I think so - it's Arial Opentype. The process was:


1) Acrobat X - OCR from image to text
2) Copy text to Windows Notepad (and correct for OCR errors - opening guillemet typically appearing as 'c', and manually converted to '<'; closing guillemet often as '~', ditto '>')
3) Paste corrected Notepad text into Word 2016 doc.
4) Word 2016 - problematic 'Search and Replace'



Dave.

 

[iko22]

I did a bit of searching around the web.

In the Unicode standard, the character symbols are known respectively as "Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark" and "Right-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark". From there, I discovered this Microsoft Document: Unicode Symbol Reference (Short)

You can copy-paste the two punctuation marks from that document, and resize as desired. Otherwise, you can enter the characters by using Alt+X:

In your document, type the hexadecimal code immediately followed by pressing Alt+X. That succeeds in my Word, and I am using English default language.
​

Hope that helps.

BTW the Fonts supporting these character symbols are listed here: Font Support

 

[Davexxx]

Many thanks - Unicode Symbol Reference (Short) is useful, interestingly, it seems to omit both '<' and '>' characters ! (the characters to replace).

Dave.

 

[iko22]

Yes, they are both in there, otherwise I would not have recommended you read the document. They are in a tiny 6 point font, which could prove difficult for some folk. You can zoom in or otherwise enlarge the font of the entire document.

Anyhow, LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK is at 00AB and RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK is at 00BB.

So copy these for future reference, or in your word processor, type 00AB followed by ALT X, and type 00BB followed by ALT X.

Here they are again '«' and '»' look. These characters were obtained by copy from document and paste into the online text editor.

 

[Davexxx]

Thanks, again.

I don't think that the characters below are '<' and '>' (they cannot be found in the text by searching for '<' and '>' in Unicode Symbol Reference (Short)):

227A ≺ PRECEDES
227B ≻ SUCCEEDS

Dave.

PS I wonder whether the fact that '<' and '>' are Word tags is at the root of this ?

 

[iko22]

Lets talk through the steps.
Copy the "»" character into the clipboard.
Grab your word document, and select Replace from the menu.
When the Replace dialog box appears, Type "~" into the Find what field.
Next, Paste the contents of the clipboard into the Replace with field.
Finally select Replace All, and let the Word Processor do the work.

Repeat for the "«" character. You say the "«" gets recognised as a "c". This is a little more tricky, as "c" is quite a common character. Your document probably contains lots of "c" that do not mean "«". So you have to adapt the procedure fractionally, to Find Next then Replace.
Copy the "«" character into the clipboard.
Grab your word document, and select Replace from the menu.
When the Replace dialog box appears, type "C" into the Find what field.
Next, Paste the contents of the clipboard into the Replace with field .
Then, (-this is the different bit-) select Find Next button.
When the WP has found a "c", you have to ask yourself if it is a "«"? If the answer is "yes", then select Replace. Otherwise, select Find Next again, until the entire Document has been searched.

Following this procedure will allow you to search & replace with the '«' and '»' characters.

 

[Davexxx]

Many thanks for the persistence - I suspect we're talking at cross-purposes.

A text sample: <portici e stanze>

which needs to look like: «portici e stanze»

but Word 'Search and Replace' produces: "portici e stanze"

Dave.

 

[iko22]

That's okay, I do this sort of thing frequently with scientific symbols. However it looks like we are talking cross purposes fractionally.

Lets see if we can iron it out. Firstly, there is no such thing as 'Search and Replace' in Word. It has always been called Find and Replace. Secondly, what are you putting into the 'Replace with' box?

 

[Davexxx]

... what are you putting into the 'Replace with' box?

»


Dave

 

[iko22]

Read Repair an Office Application and choose your Operating System from the Tabs: support.office.com

 

[Davexxx]

Thanks - I've repaired Office 2016 (online), but unfortunately no improvement.

However, a solution is to use Word AutoCorrect, e.g. '<' automatically replaced with '«' as you type.

Dave.

 

[iko22]

You can use WordPad Find & Replace as a solution. You do not need Office 2016, to do this.

WordPad would accept a '<' in the Find what box; and a '«' in the Replace with box. And WordPad will succeed with a correct replacement.

You can use Character Map to obtain the initial '«' and '»' characters.



From Character Map, click on the character you wish to copy and then click Copy. Then click Paste into the WordPad editor's Replace with box.