replacing accented characters

[Piersante Sestini]

Having exported some Italian text to Tex from Abiword, I found that 
accented characters have been screwed, so that the accented "a" has been 
translated to "\`{a}" and so forth. Lyx doesn't understand this, and 
prints them as unaccented characters. How can I search-and-replace these 
characters? The search facility in lyx does not seem to find them 
neither as unaccented, accented, of with the \'{} code. Maybe I should 
use a text editor on the lyx file?

thanks,
Piersante