how to scan file for non-ascii chars (eg cut-n-paste from ms-word)

[David Combs]

When I 'cut-n-paste' from eg ms-word-produced document, into an
emacs buffer (ie ascii), you get all kinds of "non-ascii" chars,
eg left and right double-quotes, like these:


Char: . (8221, #o20035, #x201d) point=250 of 4096 (6%) column=7
Char: . (8220, #o20034, #x201c) point=218 of 4096 (5%) column=42


accents, and so on.

When I go to save the buffer, emacs will ask if I want to
save it in eg japanese format.  Not exactly what I want.

What I'd like to do is change those "strange" characters
to their plain-ascii "equivalent", so to speak.  Like
'"' for double quote (left OR right), etc.

Surely I'm not the only one to experience this difficulty:
what work-arounds have YOU found?

Thanks!

David