Open Office Curly Quotes Solution

Today I decided to take the manuscript for Book 2 and format it as though it were ready for print. Sadly I discovered that in a number of places, the curly quote marks were completely wrong: closing quotes had been used instead of opening quotes.

After searching around the Open Office forums I discovered what promised to be the solution to my problem:

• Convert all the quotes to standard quotes (search and replace)
• Select All
• Select Default style
• Select Tools -> Autocorrect -> Apply
• Select All
• Select Default style

Sadly, this didn't work. There appears to be a long standing bug in Open Office where the curly quotes won't be applied in certain circumstances, such as when they follow a tab. And as someone who is writing a novel, this is a big deal since my manuscript is filled with such instances.

After playing around with it for a few hours, I finally discovered a forum post (here) where one user described a solution. I will repeat it here, in case it goes for a walk. For this to work, ensure you have Regular Expression selected in the search dialog box.

• Search for: "\<
• Replace with: (curly quote character)
• Select Replace All

Then

• Search for: "
• Replace with: (closed quote character)
• Select Replace All

Hopefully I'll have saved someone from the world of pain which can be the Auto Correct feature.