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How to replace “straight quotes” with «guillemets» in Word

07 April 2026
Useful tips about working in Word

We already know how to quickly replace straight quotes with guillemets in Trados Studio and memoQ. Sometimes this has to be done not in the CAT tool but directly in the “monotext,” the text in the target language in Word.
The easiest way to do this is to use regular expressions: they are indispensable in such situations.
- In Word, press Ctrl + H. The Find and Replace dialog box appears.
- Click More >>. Additional options appear in the dialog box.
- In this dialog box, select the Use wildcards check box to turn on regular expression mode. After that, enter the query "([!^13]@)" in the Find what: field and the code «\1» in the Replace with: field.
Just like with Trados Studio and memoQ, you shouldn’t do this replacement blindly. In general, it’s best to go through all the cases one by one, clicking the Replace button and checking that the replacement is performed correctly. Usually, there are not so many quotation marks in the text.