Finding Unicode characters in Word 2007

[lentulax]

I have Word 2007 with Vista Home Premium . The online Help about Finding Text
doesn't seem to be particularly adapted to the products I have . For a start
, it suggests you can find all occurrences of whatever by clicking the Find
All button - but there isn't one ! (OK - clicking on Find In/Main Document
does the job).

But I haven't found the answer to finding remote unicode characters . Online
help says that ^Unnnn in the Find What box (with Use wildcards off) will find
the unicode character whose code is nnnn ; but all it actually produces is a
message that ^U is not a valid special character for the Find What box . Have
I missed something obvious ? or can someone suggest why this doesn't work ?
(What I want to do involves the playing card symbols ; I want , when I've
finished a document , to Find All the heart/diamond symbols and click on the
Font Colour to change them to red.)

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi,

It should be a small u: say, ^u9829 for the heart.

It's most times easier to just copy/paste the character into the dialog
(select, Ctrl+C, change to dialog, Ctrl+V).

If you do use the code, you usually have the hex code rather than the
decimal code. Just as in the document, you can type the hex code in the
dialog, then use Alt+X (=ToggleCharacterCode).
Say type 2665 and then Alt+X.

You can later use "Replace" to apply the red color:
Find what: ^u9829
Replace: ^& (and choose "Format > Font > red").

Regards,
Klaus

 

[lentulax]

Thank you , Klaus ! So not only should it be a small u (though online Help
clearly shows U ), but , something Help doesn't mention , the code should be
in decimal , not hex , despite the Symbol feature using the hex codes (I had
actually tried a small u , but no items were found , since I'd naturally used
the hex code) .

Since I'm likely to use the suit symbols frequently in a document , I find
it quicker to assign short-cut keys than to copy/paste ; but thanks to your
advice , I can now do exactly what I wanted to .

A great result for my first visit to these discussion groups !

Mike