"Search" quotation marks, but only on the front or back of the quote.

[Epitheton]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently experiencing a problem with Word's "Search" Feature. It is not a technical problem but rather, I think, a problem which is not solvable the way I think it would be and for that I need your guys unpolluted minds und superior experience.

Here's my case: I'm trying to search out (and ofc replace but that's not a problem once the first part of searching is solved, I assume) quotation marks in my text – but only the front quotation marks of a word or phrase and not the back ones. So my text would be: 'Spiritus Sancti'. And I want to find only the first of the single quotation marks by using the "Search" feature. Once again, I only wanna find the highlighted marks: In nomine 'Patris' et 'Filii' et 'Spiritus Sancti'. 

This is not possible by telling them apart in a formal sense because in the language that is concerned the first and the second quotation mark will be the exact same symbol.

Do you have any ideas on how to nonetheless search out only the front (resp. back) ones of those?

Would be amazing to hear your ideas. Thanks in advance and apologies for possible misunderstandings for I am not a native english speaker.

– E.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@Epitheton 

Since you are typing in a language that doesn't actually use different symbols for left and right quotation marks, I believe a wildcard search or possibly a macro will be required. Sorry, I don't have a concrete idea for such a macro. 

[#3]

@Stefan_Blom

Thank you for your ideas, nevertheless. I will try to figure something out in that sense, which could include something like skipping every second search entry. That would assume though that no quotation is formally incomplete which, again, is a bold assumption in my job. Anyways, I'm thankful for your response and can now work on looking further.

[#4]

@Epitheton 

Someone may be able to come up with a macro.

If you don't get a response here, try https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word?sort=LastReplyDate&dir=Desc&tab=All.

[#5]

Hello,

How has been your day? Fine am sure. Thanks for being there for many people. Well, I need help with an old hard drive (IDE) that I have. The hard drive was formatted but I need the data in that hard drive. Besides, when I connect it to my laptop as an external with an adapter it doesn't show up. Perhaps, the hard drive is not spinning enough. Any hope? What can I do?

Thanks as I wait for response.

[#6]

@numeroclintgmailcom 

I'm afraid that this forum is all about Microsoft Word. 

You'd have to ask in some forum dedicated to hardware and/or operating systems.

[#7]

@Stefan_Blom Thank you very much.