Word to Text Formating Problem

lilmerlin · Sep 6, 2014

I don't know if my question is situated correctly here, but for my critter group I always need to save doc/docx as txt which turns all my apostrophes and most quotes into question-marks which makes it really horrible to read. I tried all kinda things, even pasted in editor but once uploaded it's always the same. Very frustrating. In case someone stops by here and knows a solution... thanks!

alleycat · Sep 6, 2014

I created a new thread with your question, lilmerlin.

Are you using any kind of special formatting (for example, curly quotes instead of straight quotes)? What type of text (txt) file are you saving to (other encoding, etc.)?

Maryn · Sep 6, 2014

I believe alleycat's nailed it. Curly quotes and apostrophes often fail to "translate" properly when converted and/or emailed. (Sometimes, the same happens to the instructions to start and end bold and italics fonts, too.) It's a fine chance to explore some of the characters you never, ever type on purpose.

You can find-and-replace the curly quotes and apostrophes before you do the conversion. If you'll tell us what version of Word you have, someone can help you with that if you need it.

Maryn, who uses straight quotes as default

Alexys · Sep 6, 2014

It's almost certainly a smart-quotes-versus-straight-quotes issue. If you need to export things to .txt, either stick with the characters that are actually on a standard US keyboard, or search-and-replace anything that isn't before saving as .txt.

(Yes, there are ways to export text files that contain things other than 7-bit ASCII characters, but at that point you're getting into codepages and Unicode and lions and tigers and bears, oh my! If you're writing in English, it's safer to not even try, because even if you get something that looks okay to you, the next person to look at the file may have a different codepage set . . . My guess in this case is that you have smart quotes, your system is using Windows codepage1252, and your crit group's website expects UTF-8.)

alleycat · Sep 6, 2014

Remember that the original poster is not in the US.

Alexys · Sep 7, 2014

Apologies--I have to admit that I didn't even think to check.

Assumptions, I haz them. And I should know better. ::kicks self::

Deleted member 42 · Sep 7, 2014

Curly quotes/smart quotes/printers quotes and apostrophes are "high ASCII" which means that they are encoded differently in various fonts, applications and operating systems.

Other characters that are high ASCII include em- and en-dashes, accent marks, and diacriticals.

They will not appear correctly in a .txt file.

First convert your quotation marks and apostrophes to "straight" apostrophes using the Search and Replace function.

Then save as .txt

Laer Carroll · Sep 7, 2014

For step-by-step instructions on how to do this go to the following MS link for changing curly quotes to straight ones & vice versa. The same instructions work for other autoformat changes, such as double-dashes to em-dashes.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/w...raight-quotes-and-vice-versa-HP005190124.aspx

To replace formatting such as bold, italic, & underline do the following.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/142749

Word to Text Formating Problem

lilmerlin

We are many - and get along fine!

alleycat

Still around

Maryn

At Sea

Alexys

Took a wrong turn at the Pleiades

alleycat

Still around

Alexys

Took a wrong turn at the Pleiades

Deleted member 42

Laer Carroll

Aerospace engineer turned writer