Getting the scrollbar in the insert symbols command

[mranthro]

Hi folks,

I have just switched from an old Windows machine to a new Mac. On my
old machine I used Word 2000 running on Windows 98SE. On my new
machine I have Word 2004, running on OSX 10.4.5 on a PowerPC. On my
old machine, when open up "Insert Symbols" I get some 1142 symbols
available, with a scrollbar to navigate them all. On my new machine I
get a lousy 224 symbols with no scrollbar. Does anyone know how to get
the bigger symbol set to show up?

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi folks,

I have just switched from an old Windows machine to a new Mac. On my
old machine I used Word 2000 running on Windows 98SE. On my new
machine I have Word 2004, running on OSX 10.4.5 on a PowerPC. On my
old machine, when open up "Insert Symbols" I get some 1142 symbols
available, with a scrollbar to navigate them all. On my new machine I
get a lousy 224 symbols with no scrollbar. Does anyone know how to get
the bigger symbol set to show up?

Yes. There are two ways.
1. Fiddle with the font select box in that panel. (Not everything works
perfectly e.g. Hoefler Text Ornaments -- google the group for the
ongoing whining, some of it from me)

2. Use the Mac's character palette instead of insert symbol. It's
clunky, but gives you the lot of what's out there, modulo Word's bug
with respect to font glyph extensions)

 

[mranthro]

Hi,

Thanks for your suggestions and advice. Concerning fiddling with the
font select box, that was helpful...it does show a few other fonts that
have more than 224 symbols and give you a scrollbar to navigate. Of
course, most of the symbols thereby made available are Chinese, Korean,
and Japanese. But still, on my old system the 1142 symbols appeared
when I had "normal text" selected, so the original issue is still
there. Concerning the Mac character palette, yes, thank heavens that
exists, it is very helpful, but as you say, it is clunky. Of course,
the funky symbols I insert with the Mac palette (e.g., phonetic
symbols) vanish when I open the document in a Windows machine or even
an older Mac... So the suggestions were helpful and I appreciate the
time and knowledge, but the issue remains.

 

[mranthro]

Hi,

Thanks for the long and detailed answer. I guess the bottom line is
I'm stuck with the character palette... Maybe someday I'll figure out
how to link Word and the palette so I can add some of my favorite
symbols to the "Insert" menu, which is an old trick I used to perform
on Word for Windows. Beyond my Mac capacity for now, but maybe later.
Still, thank the Users for the character palette, otherwise a lot of
professional work would be very difficult on a Mac.

Concerning the numbers, like I say, I've counted 224 in Times New Roman
on the Mac and 1142 on the PC (at least with Word 2000/Windows 98SE).
I'll have to accept that there's not a toggle switch somewhere in the
bowels of Word that says "make the remaining 918 symbols available,"
since according to you this is simply a built-in feature. Like you
say, it is definitely a bug. A sign of Microsoft's disdain for
Apple/Mac, perhaps? Or are the characters there, but requiring of some
sort of piece of Word wizardry to cause them to appear?

Concerning the Arial font--done, but it's buggy: some of the characters
appear as question marks inside a dark rotated square, others as some
sort of gothic W inside a square, and a lot of the symbols that appear
under "normal text" in my Windows machine (such as i with tilde and e
with tilde, two symbols that I use a lot) do not appear at all... So
that's not quite the answer (admittedly, both these symbols are in the
character palette).

For the nonce, it looks like the mac palette is the only solution, and
I hope I don't run into that problem of sending symbols that Word can't
interpret. What a bizarre little problem--it seems like the Word for
Mac programmers could solve this very easily, but it really causes a
lot of problems for people who work in linguistics, anthropology, book
translation, etc.

Thanks for the input.

 

[mranthro]

I see the favorites tab in the character palette. How do I tell it
what to consider a favorite?

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello [whoever],

How many symbols are involved when you refer to "some of my favorite
symbols"? If there aren't too many you can AutoCorrect (I'll provide more
information if you're interested and the suggestion is appropriate to your
circumstances).

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

On 17/3/06 12:58 AM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "mranthro"

I guess the bottom line is
I'm stuck with the character palette... Maybe someday I'll figure out
how to link Word and the palette so I can add some of my favorite
symbols to the "Insert" menu, which is an old trick I used to perform
on Word for Windows. Beyond my Mac capacity for now, but maybe later.

<snip>

 

[mranthro]

"If there aren't too many you can AutoCorrect (I'll provide more
information if you're interested and the suggestion is appropriate to
your
circumstances)."

Hi Clive,

My name is Javier... I currently live in Massachusetts, near Boston.
There are only two "difficult" symbols that I use with regularity
(though less frequently I have occasion to use phonetic symbols for
transcriptions and teaching). I would be very interested in hearing
your tip.

Javier

 

[mranthro]

"If there aren't too many you can AutoCorrect (I'll provide more
information if you're interested and the suggestion is appropriate to
your
circumstances)."

Hi Clive,

My name is Javier... I currently live in Massachusetts, near Boston.
There are only two "difficult" symbols that I use with regularity
(though less frequently I have occasion to use phonetic symbols for
transcriptions and teaching). I would be very interested in hearing
your tip.

Javier

 

[mranthro]

"For example, I have Times New Roman from the Monotype Corporation in
my
Microsoft Fonts folder. It is 1.1 MB copyrighted April 2004. That has

1,320 glyphs in it."

Hmm... This is food for thought. I installed Office 2004 straight from
a store-bought disk. Of course, it was the educators' version... I
wonder if that would make a difference. I would hope that Microsoft
would put the full range of symbols into their educators' Office, since
we do need it.

A couple of questions--
You say you have Times New Roman from the Monotype Corp. Is this
different from the one shipped normally with Office? In other words,
did you procure and install it yourself?

Also, when you say you have 1320 glyphs in your TNR font--do these show
up automatically when you open the "insert symbols" box in Word? The
thing is, I am sure the symbols are there, somewhere. When I open up
the Mac character palette, and click on a symbol, it shows me all the
fonts that contain that symbol. Let's take the e with a tilde over it
(behold: ẽ). If I open up the Mac palette and select it, it shows me
that it is available in "Times Regular," "Times Bold," "Times Italic,"
and "Times Bold Italic." But say I'm typing in Word, in Times New
Roman, and I click "Insert Symbol," which I've added to my toolbar.
The box opens up with only 8 rows by 28 columns, and e with tilde is
not among the symbols included. That's the real issue--I suspect you
are right, the symbols are there, somewhere, as evidenced by the Mac
palette's seeing them. But they do not show up in the Word insert
symbols box.

Would the fix, possibly, be taking the font from the Apple Library font
folder, duplicating it, and adding the copy to the Microsoft fonts
folder?

Javier

 

[mranthro]

"See the cogwheel icon at the bottom left of the character palette?
Select the character you want to add, then choose add to favourites
from the menu that appears when you click on the gear thingy."

Thank you, that is a very useful tip. Keeps me from having to engage
in lengthy scrolling and selecting from among different categories,
thus speeding up use of the character palette. I appreciate it.

 

[Clive Huggan]

"If there aren't too many you can AutoCorrect (I'll provide more
information if you're interested and the suggestion is appropriate to
your
circumstances)."

Hi Clive,

My name is Javier... I currently live in Massachusetts, near Boston.
There are only two "difficult" symbols that I use with regularity
(though less frequently I have occasion to use phonetic symbols for
transcriptions and teaching). I would be very interested in hearing
your tip.

Javier

"A couple" is great, Javier, because they are easily remembered if there
aren't too many ­ and I find if I have to refer to an index sheet it defeats
the purpose.

I use AutoCorrect to save me the trouble of having to make unnecessary
keystrokes for *frequently* used terms. For example, for "AutoCorrect" I
type "autocorrect" and it's replaced by the version with the upper-case
letters (I only "need" that one because I often use it in my writings about
Word). More often: I type "wrdc" and it's replaced by "WRDC" and if I want
the term in full I repeat the first letter (that's just my own convention):
so "wwrdc" is replaced by "Widget Research and Development Corporation".

Closer to what you need is when I type the name of a friend, "Francoise",
which is replaced by "Françoise".

So my suggestion would be that you create AutoCorrect entries for commonly
used terms.

But you may mainly want to insert, say, a particular accented character in
any of a huge number of words, so that's probably not much use.

To insert a particular accented character, already there are universal (on
the Mac) keyboard shortcuts such as Option-e for an acute, hence Option-e-e
to produce "é" [in case that doesn't survive on all modes of displaying this
thread: it's an e-acute].

To go beyond that and customize your own keyboard shortcut for a particular
character:

1. Insert menu -> Symbol -> choose the font and character you want.

2. Down on the bottom left you have buttons for AutoCorrect and Shortcut
Key. If you click on the latter, you will see a pane that allows you to
create your own shortcut.

[I tend to use more modifier keys for these than the usual Command or
Command-Option modifiers: particularly Control-Option-Command, which seems
like a mouthful but in practice only means you hold down the three keys to
the left/right of the spacebar with three fingers close together.]

(I use the AutoCorrect button if I want to insert, say, a Wingdings tick
(being from Massachusetts let me guess you'll call it a check) ­ I created
an entry for that titled "ttick".)

I hope this gives food for thought.

Thanks for asking this question, Javier: in checking out the steps I
discovered a feature I hadn't previously known about.

Cheers,

Clive
======

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Javier:

Thanks for using your name. We come here to be among friends. I've met
half the people in here in person. I even threatened to teach Elliott what
a real red tastes like when I was last in London

No: The ONLY difference between the educational versions of Microsoft
Products and the commercial versions is the label on the box. Your licence
number comes from a different series, but that's it

However, when you install Office, it won't install its fonts if you already
have the same-named fonts installed. You need to remove from your font
folder the fonts that you want Microsoft Office to install. That can be a
"challenge", because several of them are in the System folder and getting
the system to let them go is a problem.

If you simply double-click the Microsoft versions of Arial and Times New
Roman in the Finder, it will offer to install them for you. It will add
them as duplicates. You should then be able to disable the System versions
and remove them.

No, sorry, they won't show their full range of characters in the Insert
Symbol dialog. Word has these fonts marked internally as being only 256
characters. I think there's a way around that, but I haven't learned it
yet.

However, if you use Character Palette, you can see and use the full range of
characters. Then pay attention to Clive's technique for inserting the
characters with AutoCorrect whenever you want them.

Hope this helps

"For example, I have Times New Roman from the Monotype Corporation in
my
Microsoft Fonts folder. It is 1.1 MB copyrighted April 2004. That has

1,320 glyphs in it."

Hmm... This is food for thought. I installed Office 2004 straight from
a store-bought disk. Of course, it was the educators' version... I
wonder if that would make a difference. I would hope that Microsoft
would put the full range of symbols into their educators' Office, since
we do need it.

A couple of questions--
You say you have Times New Roman from the Monotype Corp. Is this
different from the one shipped normally with Office? In other words,
did you procure and install it yourself?

Also, when you say you have 1320 glyphs in your TNR font--do these show
up automatically when you open the "insert symbols" box in Word? The
thing is, I am sure the symbols are there, somewhere. When I open up
the Mac character palette, and click on a symbol, it shows me all the
fonts that contain that symbol. Let's take the e with a tilde over it
(behold: ẽ). If I open up the Mac palette and select it, it shows me
that it is available in "Times Regular," "Times Bold," "Times Italic,"
and "Times Bold Italic." But say I'm typing in Word, in Times New
Roman, and I click "Insert Symbol," which I've added to my toolbar.
The box opens up with only 8 rows by 28 columns, and e with tilde is
not among the symbols included. That's the real issue--I suspect you
are right, the symbols are there, somewhere, as evidenced by the Mac
palette's seeing them. But they do not show up in the Word insert
symbols box.

Would the fix, possibly, be taking the font from the Apple Library font
folder, duplicating it, and adding the copy to the Microsoft fonts
folder?

Javier

--

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

 

[mranthro]

Clive,

I used your technique, but a little modified. It's very good for words
that are repeatedly going to be used. Regrettably, my initial
problem--that the symbols I want do not appear in my insert symbols
dialog box--remains. We have ascertained that the symbols are there,
somewhere, but somehow the insert symbols box will not show them, only
the character palette (this is still the great mystery at the heart of
my original question).

However, what I did was open up the character palette, then choose
Tools--Autocorrect. Then I typed, for example, kexitxo (under replace)
and then, with the help of the character palette, kẽxĩtxo under
"with." [This is a type of indigenous healer from Amazonia].
Interestingly, the Word Autocorrect display quickly replaced
"kẽxĩtxo" with "k_x_txo". However, when I actually tried it in a
Word document, it worked correctly, putting the special characters in
rather than the underscores (it had me worried there for a second).

Your notion of using various words to tell Word to insert special
symbols (ttick for the Wingdings tick, for example) is very interesting
and is something I had not thought of. It is a very clever way to
bypass using the character palette, though I wonder just how much Word
can be stretched by this technique before it starts inserting hollow
boxes and underscores. We'll see--the idea is excellent.

P.S., you are right, I would call it a "check." A tick for me is a
bloodsucking arachnid-like thing. I do like linguistic variety.

Haven't tried John's more complex folder-switch yet, but I will post
the results when I do.

Many thanks for your help and advice.

Javier

 

[Clive Huggan]

Thanks for the feedback, Javier!

It never ceases to amaze me how varied, if not exotic, are the uses to which
we can put this wonderfully flexible (if not sometimes exasperating)
application...

BTW, I include notes on how I use AutoCorrect in "Bend Word to Your Will",
which is available as a free download from the Word MVPs' website
(http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html). There may be some
approaches in there that may be useful in your quest.

[Note: "Bend Word to your will" is designed to be used electronically and
most subjects are self-contained dictionary-style entries. If you decide to
read more widely than the item I've referred to, it's important to read the
front end of the document -- especially pages 3 and 5 -- so you can select
some Word settings that will allow you to use the document effectively.]

Cheers,
Clive
=======