You have already discovered that using Find/Replace to locate leading
apostrophes is very difficult because the leading apostrophe isn't really
part of the text string. It does not contribute to the length of the string,
etc.

I don't know a way to locate the things with resorting to VBA.
--
Gary's Student


"Bob" wrote:

Thanks for the helpful macro. However, I was hoping to find the ' character
(i.e., the one that is used as a formatting code and appears in the formula
bar but not in the cell) using Excel's Find command. Any suggestions?
Thanks again,
Bob


"Gary''s Student" wrote:

This little macro will locate all cells that start with an apostrophe:


Sub find_quote()
Dim rt As Range
Set rt = Nothing
For Each r In ActiveSheet.UsedRange
If r.PrefixCharacter = "'" Then
If rt Is Nothing Then
Set rt = r
Else
Set rt = Union(r, rt)
End If
End If
Next
rt.Select
End Sub



--
Gary's Student


"Bob" wrote:

I am trying to locate cells that contain an apostrophe as the first character
in the cell. When using Excel's Find command, I input "'" (double quotes,
apostrophe, double quotes) as the search criteria, but Excel can't seem to
find any (even though I know for a fact that there are cells that contain an
apostrophe).
Can anyone tell me what search criteria I should be using?
Thanks,
Bob