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Mac Forum / Applications / Word / July 2008Missing Symbols
Version: v.X Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Processor: Power PC My Bridge partner has sent me from his PC a Microsoft Word document that includes many symbols for Spades, Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs. For me these show up merely as red or black underscore dashes. His Word programme is described as Word 2000, release 9.0.2720. Can I or how can I get the symbols to appear properly? Thanx BB Hi Bruce - Although your description of the characters doesn't sound "typical" my first suspicion is that it may be a font issue. Either the font used in the doc is one that you don't have available on your Mac or the characters were inserted as some sort of special graphic symbols. If that's the case you probably can't do much on your end short of obtaining a compatible font or having the originator redo the doc for you. However, there could be at least one other possibility. Do a Command+A to select all, then go to Format> Paragraph - Indents & Spacing. Check to see what appears for the Line Spacing in the document. If that value appears blank or as anything other than Single, set it to Single & see if that allows the symbols to display. If it does you may have to adjust from there but at least it may put you on the right track. HTH |:>) Bob Jones [MVP] Office:Mac On 7/26/08 10:09 AM, in article 59b553a3.-1@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw, > Version: v.X > Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > BB > Version: v.X > Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > BB In Word's Preferences, check the Compatibility tab to see if your system is missing the font used by the author. Thanx for this. Unfortunately it does not do the business. Curiously, on my wife's iBook running Leopard (with same Office suite) the symbols don't show up as before, but they do on the Mail prog. Quick Look feature. BB Hi Bruce: Ask him which font he used. Chances are it's an old non-Unicode version of something. If he were using a Unicode font, the symbols would simply appear without you having to do anything. The Monotype Sorts font has the symbols you are looking for. If you insert them from a Unicode font, they will work fine on his PC and your Mac. Cheers On 31/07/08 2:17 AM, in article 59b553a3.2@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw, > Thanx for this. Unfortunately it does not do the business. Curiously, on my > wife's iBook running Leopard (with same Office suite) the symbols don't show > up as before, but they do on the Mail prog. Quick Look feature. > > BB  SignatureDon't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/ Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to. John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac Sydney, Australia. mailto:john@mcghie.name Thanx for this. I asked him and he said this- "My documents all use a TrueType font called Times New Roman. When I use Word, the symbols are inserted by clicking on 'Insert' then on 'Symbol'. Word then produces an array of symbols accompanied by a Font box containing '(normal text)'. When I select the symbol e.g for Hearts, the screen bottom says 'Insert Times New Roman Character Unicode 2665'. I hope that helps." Does this get us any further forward? BB > Thanx for this. > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Does this get us any further forward? Yes. His version of Word is newer than yours. (Earlier you said v.X right?) His uses Unicode fonts. Your version of Word does not. You would have to get the card suit characters from a symbol font. I don't think there is any neat way to force the right symbols from his version of Word to yours, but I have been wrong before. The easy way for you to fix things would be to install a copy of Word 2004 or 2008. There are plenty of other good reasons for doing so. Each of them come with up-to-date Times New Roman with more Unicode characters than you would care to think about without pharmacological assistance. If you don't want to pay for Office again, you could try opening the file with TextEdit. You might need to get a unicode TNR font, at the risk of messing up your Word's view of it. Your bridge buddy's PC one should work, but be aware that nicking fonts is naughty. (I do it all time, but I'm *really* naughty) SignatureTo de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$ PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248 Yes, this looks like it. TextEdit produces all the symbols in the right place. Document format is all to pot, of course, but that's not the point. A friend (with a PC) thought that somewhere I could change 'Western' characters for 'Microsoft', but I can find nowhere for that to happen. So it looks like a new version of Office. I knew it would come down to money. Thanx for the pointer. BB No, but wait. Here's a thing. If I get the doc up on TextEdit, highlite, copy and paste into a new Word doc, it arrives complete with Symbols and then I have a malformed version of the original in which the symbols did not appear. Does this alter the price of fish? BB The fish market remains unchanged :-) Elliott's nailed the problem. What you've confirmed is simply that even TextEdit is more Unicode-savvy than Word X - it's smart enough to go looking for the necessary characters rather than throwing up its hands in dismay. It is truly time to abandon X in favor of a newer model - at least to 2004 even if you don't want to go for 2008 :-) I've seen the Standard upgrade for Office 2004 as low as $99.97 US in just a brief Google search. Regards |:>) Bob Jones [MVP] Office:Mac On 7/31/08 11:52 AM, in article 59b553a3.7@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw, > No, but wait. Here's a thing. If I get the doc up on TextEdit, highlite, copy > and paste into a new Word doc, it arrives complete with Symbols and then I [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > BB |
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