I have a spreadsheet where the previous user changed the font to symbol for some letters (like a to become the greek letter alpha or b to beta). However, this used didn't really enter in the symbols via insert->symbol (or Unicode characters 945,223). When I look in the formula bar, change the font/format, or run a simple command like concatenate, excel recognizes this text just as a and b, discarding valuable information.
Is there any way to find and replace formatted text, specifically for the symbol font? I'd like to find all instances where the letter a is written in symbol font and replace with alpha.

I've already tried
activecell.Replace chrw(945),"alpha"
activecell.Replace chr(223),"beta"

and this will work only if I insert the true symbols, not format the font.