Sure, thanks for assisting terrypin.
Yes, it is simply 1. Ignore 2. and 3. as neither are required.
All I need is to be able to automatically enclose any text string with quotation marks so I can return more targeted search results in another app.
"this is what I mean"
"note that it's double commas, not singles"
"many thanks!"
P.S. I've just thought - I would be expecting the first (") (ignore parentheses) to be inserted immediately, but as I will still be typing the text, the second (") needs to be inserted after I have finished typing the text string. Typically the search will be in the format dd.mm.yyyy (e.g. "02.01.1973") but it could also be text that takes me 5-10 secs to type. If possible, I wouldn't want the second (") to be time-related (e.g. not 'continue macro after 5/10/15 seconds') as I don't know how long it's likely to take me to type and I don't want to either be twiddling my thumbs waiting for the other half of the macro to execute or being rushed to enter the data in time!