Re: Insert Symbols: All of Them

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From: Suzanne S. Barnhill (sbarnhill_at_mvps.org)
Date: 02/19/05 

Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 10:07:38 -0600

I think you're getting a bit confused here. What you see in the Insert
Symbol dialog combines two different things: fonts and character sets. If
you leave the setting to "(normal text)," you are seeing all the characters
available in the font you're currently using. These are divided up into
"character sets" defined by Unicode; most fonts contain a limited number of
character sets, and different fonts contain different ones. Some "large"
Unicode fonts such as Arial Unicode MS contain many more character sets than
ordinary fonts.

You can also choose a different (usually symbol) font if the font you're
using doesn't contain the symbol you need. I have already explained how to
create font charts for symbol charts (see my answer to Nadina's question on
"Printing all symbols" in this same newsgroup on February 17), but, as I
pointed out there, a font chart for an entire Unicode font would be way too
much trouble; you can get those from http://www.unicode.org/charts/ Symbol
fonts differ from ordinary Unicode fonts in that they don't use Unicode
(hex) character numbers. They are numbered only as ASCII (32-255 for all
fonts), but the characters are different in each font, whereas Unicode
characters are the same in every font: that is, glyph 0041 is always a
capital A; it may look very different in a script or Old English font from
the way it looks in Times New Roman or Arial, but it is still a capital A.
Character 41 in a symbol font may be a right parenthesis (Symbol), a
telephone symbol (Wingdings), or a sheet of paper (Wingdings 2), so
characters inserted in these fonts must be protected from change to another
font because they would become meaningless, whereas Unicode characters are
more or less interchangeable.

You can insert more than one symbol at a time. In recent versions of Word,
the Symbol dialog stays open so that you can insert as many as you like, and
you can "step out of" the dialog and edit your document in between, too, if
desired. For more on inserting symbols and other special characters, see htt
p://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/InsertSpecChars.htm 

-- 
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
"Rebecca" <Rebecca@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:890B292C-9645-4747-953F-1A69AD748484@microsoft.com...
> Greetings.  I am using Windows XP (Home) and Office 2003.  In Word 2003, I
> occasionally have to insert various symbols and unusual letters and the
like.
>  If I click on Insert then Symbol, I then have to choose a particular
font,
> and then with my mouse I click and insert it into the Word document (very
> cumbersome because the window hides my document).  However, occasionally I
> would like to insert entire rows of the symbols / letters (etc.) into my
> document (instead of laboriously clicking of them one by one).  Is there
some
> way to copy more than one symbol at a time? Or, better yet, can the entire
> font set be saved in a file (not merely printed out)?  Or is there a place
on
> the Internet where the character sets are available?  This would certainly
> save time and effort.  Thanks for your help.

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