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In Find and Replace, check the box for "Match using regular expressions."
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To find all the starting quotes:
Find
(?<=\s|^)\"
and replace all with“
(This means "a straight quotation mark preceded immediately by whitespace or the beginning of the document.")
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Once you've replaced all the starting quotes, the remaining ones should all be ending quotes. So:
Find
\"
and replace all with”
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Don't forget single quotes and apostrophes. If you're sure you haven't used any single quotes as quotes, only as apostrophes, you can skip this step. If you may have used some as quotes, use the same pattern:
Find
(?<=\s|^)\'
and replace all with‘
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Finally, apostrophes and ending single quotes:
Find
\'
and replace all with’
Note: There are some rare edge cases that will be misidentified by this, like when a quotation starts immediately after a dash (example). The built in smart quotes feature also misidentifies these. If you think you might have them, I recommend searching for them separately—after the replacements above, you could find them with \B”\b
.