J
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
All:
There have been a couple of postings recently from users seeing various
desired symbols as blank or as question-marks in Word. And from users
wanting to add special symbols.
The answer to all of these has been "install the font that contains the
symbol you want." However, sometimes even when you do this, the character
does not appear, because the original author of the document inserted the
character from a different font.
In this case, you have to type the correct character into the document. One
way to do this is using Insert>Symbol. In the Insert>Symbol dialog, Word
2004 by default shows only the fonts on your system that are marked by their
creators as being "Symbol" fonts. (It automatically collects these from the
system font cache when it starts.)
This can lead to a frustrating problem:
* Some specialty fonts are not correctly marked as symbol fonts.
* Some users require characters that are "not" symbols, so the fonts that
contain them are correctly marked as not being symbol fonts.
The answer to both these problems is to add the font you need to Word's
Insert>Symbol dialog. This is possible, and there is a procedure in the
Microsoft Knowledgebase for doing so. I won't refer to that procedure,
because we have just discovered that due to a bug in Word 2004, it doesn't
work. It "should", but it doesn't.
However, you "can" add the fonts manually (and I think it's simpler to do it
manually than it is to use the command we're supposed to use...). I always
thought it was possible, but I was unable to work out how.
Thanks are due to Ritika Pathak of Microsoft, who took time out at a very
busy time to thoroughly research the issue. She has found the following
work-around, for which a few of us will be thoroughly grateful!
1) Quit Word (not just minimised -- we need it to let a config file go...)
2) Find the file named "Word Font Substitutes". It's probably easier to
search for it, it's fairly deeply buried in ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/
3) Use TextEdit to open this file (you can do it in any text editor: for
example vi or pico). You "can" also do it in Word: if you're careful to use
plain text and Quit immediately before Word gets a chance to write to the
file. Easier to use TextEdit
4) Scroll to the bottom of the file.
5) In the [SymbolFonts] section, copy some previous font entries (you need
one more than the number of fonts you want to add). To add one font, copy
the previous 2 font entries.
REASON: The Word Font Substitutes file uses a special character to mark new
line for each font entry (^M) which we copy in the previous entries.
Pressing <Enter> in the file will insert a carriage-return, which only
appends the new font name to previous entry, causing the addition to fail.
6) Paste the copied text after the last font entry (the last line in the
file). So, if last font in file looks like: "Webdings=", paste the copied
text immediately after "="
7) Delete the text that is pasted after "Webdings=" so that line reads
simply "Webdings=".
Overtype the text of the other pasted font entries with the names of your
desired new fonts (for example, "Arial Black="). One name per line, each
line ends in "=" plus the non-visible character we pasted.
8) Save and close the Word Font Substitutes file
When you re-launch Word the font(s) you added should show up in the
Insert>Symbol dialog.
If they do not, check to see that the font is not in the System font folder.
Word's Font Substitutes mechanism can't use fonts from there.
Thanks Ritika -- that's what we needed
(Note: This work-around should not be needed in Word X. We could guess
that it might not be required in the next version of Word.)
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
There have been a couple of postings recently from users seeing various
desired symbols as blank or as question-marks in Word. And from users
wanting to add special symbols.
The answer to all of these has been "install the font that contains the
symbol you want." However, sometimes even when you do this, the character
does not appear, because the original author of the document inserted the
character from a different font.
In this case, you have to type the correct character into the document. One
way to do this is using Insert>Symbol. In the Insert>Symbol dialog, Word
2004 by default shows only the fonts on your system that are marked by their
creators as being "Symbol" fonts. (It automatically collects these from the
system font cache when it starts.)
This can lead to a frustrating problem:
* Some specialty fonts are not correctly marked as symbol fonts.
* Some users require characters that are "not" symbols, so the fonts that
contain them are correctly marked as not being symbol fonts.
The answer to both these problems is to add the font you need to Word's
Insert>Symbol dialog. This is possible, and there is a procedure in the
Microsoft Knowledgebase for doing so. I won't refer to that procedure,
because we have just discovered that due to a bug in Word 2004, it doesn't
work. It "should", but it doesn't.
However, you "can" add the fonts manually (and I think it's simpler to do it
manually than it is to use the command we're supposed to use...). I always
thought it was possible, but I was unable to work out how.
Thanks are due to Ritika Pathak of Microsoft, who took time out at a very
busy time to thoroughly research the issue. She has found the following
work-around, for which a few of us will be thoroughly grateful!
1) Quit Word (not just minimised -- we need it to let a config file go...)
2) Find the file named "Word Font Substitutes". It's probably easier to
search for it, it's fairly deeply buried in ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/
3) Use TextEdit to open this file (you can do it in any text editor: for
example vi or pico). You "can" also do it in Word: if you're careful to use
plain text and Quit immediately before Word gets a chance to write to the
file. Easier to use TextEdit
4) Scroll to the bottom of the file.
5) In the [SymbolFonts] section, copy some previous font entries (you need
one more than the number of fonts you want to add). To add one font, copy
the previous 2 font entries.
REASON: The Word Font Substitutes file uses a special character to mark new
line for each font entry (^M) which we copy in the previous entries.
Pressing <Enter> in the file will insert a carriage-return, which only
appends the new font name to previous entry, causing the addition to fail.
6) Paste the copied text after the last font entry (the last line in the
file). So, if last font in file looks like: "Webdings=", paste the copied
text immediately after "="
7) Delete the text that is pasted after "Webdings=" so that line reads
simply "Webdings=".
Overtype the text of the other pasted font entries with the names of your
desired new fonts (for example, "Arial Black="). One name per line, each
line ends in "=" plus the non-visible character we pasted.
8) Save and close the Word Font Substitutes file
When you re-launch Word the font(s) you added should show up in the
Insert>Symbol dialog.
If they do not, check to see that the font is not in the System font folder.
Word's Font Substitutes mechanism can't use fonts from there.
Thanks Ritika -- that's what we needed
(Note: This work-around should not be needed in Word X. We could guess
that it might not be required in the next version of Word.)
Cheers
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410