Re: unable to insert symbol with latest version of Office

In article <1130007091.370819.253830@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
blachman <blachman2001@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I recently upgraded to Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac.
>
> But, now I can't use "insert symbol." Every time I try I get boxes in
> the Word document. Interestingly, if I paste the text in other
> applications (like Eudora or even in this message the "boxes" display
> as symbols. But, they won't display or print in a Word document. I
> tried the latest update, but have the same problem. I did not have
> this problem with Office X. Can you give me any guidance? I am using
> a Mac G4 with Tiger 10.4.2.
>
I also recently changed from X to 2004. I can reproduce what you
report, depending on the symbol and the font I'm in.

2004 has started using Unicode. X used "Apple Extended". It looks like
the insert symbol dialog expects the latter, at least in some fonts,
and then Word puts its fingers in its ears, and draws a box instead.

My workaround is to abandon 'insert symbol' and to use the Mac's
"Character Palette" instead. It might be naughty, but it works.

For instance, if I insert an Apple sign, in either Times New Roman,
(Word 2004 Unicode variant) or Adobe Garamond Pro ( a Unicode open type
font), insert symbol tells me it is inserting "character 240 (Unicode
character 63743)" and it gives me a goddamn box!

If I use the character palette to insert the same character into my
Word doc it works like a bought one. I even made sure it was the same
unicode glyph F8FF aka 63743 in decimal.

...and the reason is that character 63743 does not exist in either of
the two fonts I tried with insert character in Word. Character palette
silently inserts the character with its own choice of font, in my case,
it snuck in a Lucida Grande apple - a granny smith apple if ever there
was one.

Back in Word, when I changed the font of the box to Optima Extra Black
it leapt out as some kind of golden delicious.

So, Word is being strict about the font when insert character is done
in 'normal text'. It wont let you change fonts except to swap to
various 'sort' fonts like wingdings.

This is definitely a bug, since it shows the expected glyph in the
selection palette and yet drops a box into your document.

(I'll file this post as a bug report if I can work out how. I'm blowed
if I can be bothered typing it all in again)

If you use character palette, it might be prudent to confirm that it
works with a print to pdf, and also try mailing it to someone on the
dark side. The odds are that it won't work on the dark side unless the
recipient has your own impeccable taste in fonts.

(Of course, you can always send the poor muppet the PDF, because it
does embed fonts properly most of the time, and won't screw up your
pagination either - that's just a sly dig for the poor sod reading the
bug report)

--
To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$
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.

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