Prevent: Typing O followed by / (slash) switching to foriegn character

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mheydman@yahoo.com - 15 Jun 2005 16:46 GMT

NOTE: This post was originally made to microsoft.public.powerpoint but
it was suggested I try here instead.

Using PPT 2004 on Mac, OSX... When a particular user types an "o"
followed by a "/", the two characters are replaced with a "Ø".

A similar thing happens when we type an L followed by a slash.

This only happens to this user; other users logged in to the same
machine cannot reproduce this problem (feature?).

And only one particular font ("times") on this particular machine
exhibits this behavior... In our situation it is undesirable. But this
is the font we must use and the machine we must use it on.

I cannot find any setting in PPT that will allow me to turn this
feature off. How should I go about getting PPT to allow me to enter o/
or l/ ?

Thanks,

Matt

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Paul Ballou - 15 Jun 2005 18:09 GMT

Have you checked Tools | Autocorrect ?

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Paul Ballou
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mheydman@yahoo.com - 16 Jun 2005 14:34 GMT

Thanks, Paul.

Autocrrect was our first stop, and we found nothing in there related to
this problem.

-Matt

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Paul Ballou - 16 Jun 2005 15:06 GMT

Hi Matt,

I can't think of anything else but it's strange that it would be doing
it with the Times font. When I looked at the character palette Times font
collection is not listed as containing the symbol

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> Thanks, Paul.
>
> Autocrrect was our first stop, and we found nothing in there related to
> this problem.
>
> -Matt

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Paul Berkowitz - 17 Jun 2005 02:20 GMT

On 6/15/05 8:46 AM, in article
1118850367.504043.255550@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, "mheydman@yahoo.com"

> NOTE: This post was originally made to microsoft.public.powerpoint but
> it was suggested I try here instead.
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> feature off. How should I go about getting PPT to allow me to enter o/
> or l/ ?

It's a Mac OS issue (bug) that occurs only for certain fonts, but does so in
all applications, including TextEdit, Word, etc. not just PowerPoint. It
came up on another newsgroup recently too.

This is just an issue for Palatino font (all sizes) plus one size of one
other font - I forget which. So just change the font.

Signature

Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

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mheydman@yahoo.com - 17 Jun 2005 15:11 GMT

Thanks for the information.

We may be experienceing a different problem than you describe, as it
does not happen in Word or TextEdit, only in PPT.

It occurs using the Times font at any size. ANd only for this
particular user. (Another user logged into the same machine using the
same font in the same version of PPT cannot reporduce the issue).

We are close to reformatting the machine and reinstalling the OS and
software.

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Paul Berkowitz - 18 Jun 2005 00:53 GMT

On 6/17/05 7:11 AM, in article
1119017477.097707.110790@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, "mheydman@yahoo.com"

> Thanks for the information.
>
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> We are close to reformatting the machine and reinstalling the OS and
> software.

I doubt you'd need to either reformat the machine or reinstall the OS for
something that's so specific! You probably have a font conflict. (Perhaps
what the user thinks is Times is actually Palatino!) But I'd say it's
especially odd if it doesn't affect Word, only PPT, since all Office apps
use the same fonts in the same folder.

I'd start by removing PPT Preferences:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/com.microsoft.PowerPoint.prefs.plist

where ~/ is your user folder.

(Unfortunately, Character Palette _does_ show Times Regular as containing ø
- it's 00F8 in the Latin-1 Supplement group.)

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mheydman@yahoo.com - 20 Jun 2005 21:22 GMT

I removed the preference file for that user as you mentioned... to no
avail, argggh!

I have verified that the problem isn't between the chair & keyboard as
the behavior occurs when any of us in the IT dept test it as well.

Puzzling.....

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nospam.andrew@gmail.com - 20 Jun 2005 21:54 GMT

I've never heard of your issue before and can't reproduce it but before
you do something as drastic as reformatting and reintalling, I'd try
deleting the OS font cache. See page 26 of
http://images.apple.com/pro/pdf/L303878B_Font_TT_v4.pdf for directions
on how to manually do it.

I've never tried the manual method but whenever I've had font weirdness
I've used Yasu from http://www.jimmitchelldesigns.com/yasu.html
w/success. I would only check "clear font cache" and uncheck
everything else.

Please do post if this works for you.

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mheydman@yahoo.com - 11 Jul 2005 15:20 GMT

FIXED!

Thank you all for your suggestions. I tried everything suggested but
could not fix the problem.

The final solution was to back up the user's data and re-create the
user. This has fixed the problem, leading me to believe that some sort
of corruption existed in the previous user's config files. Whew, at
least we didn't have to reformat!

Thanks again,

Matthew

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Mac Forum / Applications / PowerPoint / July 2005

Prevent: Typing O followed by / (slash) switching to foriegn character