I was recently sent a file that had straight quotation marks (bothsingle and double) instead of curly (typographer’s) quotes. It turns out that it’s harder to replace these than it should be. Here are twomethods, each with their pros and cons.

Type 1:

Find/ChangeIt’s easy to search for quotes: Just type a single or double quotemark in the Find What field of the Find/Change dialog box. But howdo you convert a straight single quote to a curly quote? There is akeyboard shortcut (different on Mac OS and Windows) to type curlyquotes, but why bother trying to remember it? Just pick a specialcharacter from the little flyout menu to the right of the Change Tofield (it’s the one labeled with a small black triangle).

Unfortunately, you have to pick either the left or the right quote –so you should probably search for a space character followed by aquote first. That will find most of the beginning quotes (because thereis usually a space before an open quote mark). Replace that with aspace followed by the Single or Double Left Quotation Mark (from thatflyout menu). Next search for all the paragraph characters (again, fromthat menu) followed by a quote mark. That’ll find all the quote marksat the beginning of a sentence. The quote marks that are left over areprobably close marks, so you can search for all the rest of the quotemarks and change them to the Single or Double Right Quotation Mark.

Type 2:

Export/ImportHere’s a far faster way to accomplish the same thing. (Thanks to Anne-Marie Concepcion for the clue to this solution.) Place the flashing textcursor in the story and choose File > Export. Then choose InDesignTagged Text from the Format popup menu and click Save (noting whereyou’re saving the file, of course). Now select the whole text story in yourdocument, delete it, choose File > Place, and select the file you just savedout. Before you click OK, turn on Show Import Options. Now, when youclick OK, InDesign offers you the option of replacing your quotes withtypographer quotes. Turn it on, click OK, and you’re done.
The first solution takes longer, but is great when you have a bunch ofdifferent text stories in your document (or you want to search acrossmultiple open documents). The second solution is faster, but only worksone story at a time.