Finding the ascii of special characters (NOT in charmap); an interesting problem

[CompleteNewb]

I'm posting this here because most of the posts I found that were even
remotely similar to my problem were either in this Word group or some
specialized programming language group that was useless to me. Since this
problem originates in Word, I'm hoping someone can help me.

Historically, I've been very successful with the Replace funtion and special
characters. This one, however, stumped me at every turn:

A user was using Ctrl + [the keyboard (NOT Numberpad) minus sign] to enter
the "not" symbol. This symbol is identical to the Alt+0172 symbol (¬). By
the way, I had to find that symbol somewhere on a webpage just to copy/paste
it in this post, because I couldn't figure out how to do it on a laptop
kyboard with no number pad; THAT'S a whole separate issue. However, when,
in a new document, I used Alt+0172 to make the symbol, and copy/pasted the
symbol from the user's document, theirs was slightly longer and thinner. To
prove that the PC was seeing them as two different things, a "Find" in my
new document for ^0172 WOULD find the symbols I made using Alt+0172, but
would NOT find the ones from user's document using Ctrl+- (the "-" being the
"minus sign" key, directly to the right of the "0" key).

I tried every avenue open to me, including looking through the Windows
Character Map under the same font the user was using to find the symbol. I
found the symbol, but again, according to the character map, it was the one
using Alt+0172, NOT the one using Ctrl+-. I also looked through the ascii
tables on the Web (all of which seem to stop at 127), and trying to
copy/paste the special character in Word's Special Character Replace dialog
box. Pasting would paste nothing. I then found a couple online
character-to-ascii conversion utilities, all of which showed only the same
charctaer, not the ascii equivalent. Even doing the ol' "view source"
wouldn't show me the typical "&#[numbers];", it actually showed the symbol
in the source in notepad.

So, my question is, how can I find out what Word needs to see in the "Find"
box in order to find these "not" marks that are VERY similar to the Alt+0172
ones, but apparently not the same? Is there a way anywhere to copy/paste
this character into something that will show me what the ascii equivalent
is? Is this a "it's the same symbol, but a different font" issue? That
seems impossible. Plus, I used the same font set in Character Map just in
case it was font specific (again, the Times New Roman font set of this
particular symbol was STILL Alt+0172).

So, anyone out there with Windows XP and the version of Word included in
Office XP, if you open a Word document, make the font Times New Roman, and
wherever the cursor happens to be, hold Ctrl and hit the "minus" key next to
the 0 (zero, NOT on the number pad, but the numbers in a row along the top),
please tell me; how can I use the Find or Replace function to find that
symbol that you just made?

And as a side note, for when I run into similar things in the future, is
there any utility anyone knows of where I can copy any character from
Word/Excel/Access/Outlook/WhatHaveYou, and have it tell me what the ascii
equivalent is?

Thanks for reading, and any help is appreciated.

 

[PeterMcC]

CompleteNewb wrote in

I'm posting this here because most of the posts I found that were even
remotely similar to my problem were either in this Word group or some
specialized programming language group that was useless to me. Since
this problem originates in Word, I'm hoping someone can help me.

Historically, I've been very successful with the Replace funtion and
special characters. This one, however, stumped me at every turn:

A user was using Ctrl + [the keyboard (NOT Numberpad) minus sign] to
enter the "not" symbol. This symbol is identical to the Alt+0172
symbol (¬). By the way, I had to find that symbol somewhere on a
webpage just to copy/paste it in this post, because I couldn't figure
out how to do it on a laptop kyboard with no number pad; THAT'S a
whole separate issue. However, when, in a new document, I used
Alt+0172 to make the symbol, and copy/pasted the symbol from the
user's document, theirs was slightly longer and thinner. To prove
that the PC was seeing them as two different things, a "Find" in my
new document for ^0172 WOULD find the symbols I made using Alt+0172,
but would NOT find the ones from user's document using Ctrl+- (the
"-" being the "minus sign" key, directly to the right of the "0"
key).

I tried every avenue open to me, including looking through the Windows
Character Map under the same font the user was using to find the
symbol. I found the symbol, but again, according to the character
map, it was the one using Alt+0172, NOT the one using Ctrl+-. I also
looked through the ascii tables on the Web (all of which seem to stop
at 127),

<snip>

The extended character set for the PC is available at:

http://www.evergreen.edu/biophysics/technotes/program/ascii_ext-pc.htm

There are links to other character sets at the bottom of the page.