Keyboard Input Type not recognized by Office 2008

[paradiso]

I have an english version of Office 2008 installed and my OS X is set to German. My Keyboard Input Type is set to Swiss German. In Office though, espechially in PowerPoint, this is not recognized. A fresh PPT displays text I input in (old) greek letters and also the text in the notes field as well as any text in outline view is like that. The latter two are even in areas where font choice is not possible as the formatting is defined by the software itself. If I change my Keyboard Input Type to Arabic the text is correctly displayed in arabic letters. If I choose any Latin language though I always have the problem with the old greek characters.
I have already tried reinstalling office multiple times and exchanged fonts etc. With Office 2004 no such problems ever occured. Has anyone experienced similar problems? Solutions? Office 2008 is totally unusable like that!

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I have an english version of Office 2008 installed and my OS X is set
to German. My Keyboard Input Type is set to Swiss German. In Office
though, espechially in PowerPoint, this is not recognized. A fresh PPT
displays text I input in (old) greek letters and also the text in the
notes field as well as any text in outline view is like that.

Other users have reported related problems with the Belgian keyboard
layout (Office then thinks everything has to be in Dutch even if the
users would liek to use French).
This is definitively a bug. Your situation might be related. If it is
the case, then at this point I have no workaround for you....


Could you do me a favor and check what language is set for your
documents (Tools:Language)??

Corentin

 

[paradiso]

Hi Corentin

Thanks for taking the time to adress my issue!
The document language is also set to swiss german. Changing this setting does not have an effect on my problem.
Maybe another observation is of interest: The problem seems to be related to the Arial font somehow. If I change the font in the presentation to arial the characters are displayed in old greek. Using another font the characters in areas with font choice (eg. the slide itself) are displayed correctly. Interestingly in the outline view only the content text (eg. bullet lists) is displayed incorrectly while the title text appears correct in latin letters. I tried to uninstall the arial that came with office and replace it with a known good one from a friend whithout Office 2008 but to no avail. the problem persisted (although now the greek letters were suddenly in italics, heck knows why...). This definitely is a bug, although of the few people I know, who also use Office 2008 in a swiss german environment, none have the same issue.
If you have any further insights about something i might be overlooking I would greatly apprechiate them. Otherwise it would still be great if you could report my issue to the appropriate channels.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Maybe another observation is of interest: The problem seems to be
related to the Arial font somehow. If I change the font in the
presentation to arial the characters are displayed in old greek.

Interesting. I wonder if it could be due to font corruption...
That seems to be a different issue than the other Input Method bug.

Using
another font the characters in areas with font choice (eg. the slide
itself) are displayed correctly. Interestingly in the outline view only
the content text (eg. bullet lists) is displayed incorrectly while the
title text appears correct in latin letters. I tried to uninstall the
arial that came with office and replace it with a known good one from a
friend whithout Office 2008 but to no avail. the problem persisted
(although now the greek letters were suddenly in italics, heck knows
why...). This definitely is a bug, although of the few people I know,
who also use Office 2008 in a swiss german environment, none have the
same issue.<br>

You should launch Font Book from your applciation folder, select all
fonts (or just Arial) and use the commant to validate the fonts. It
might flag a corruption or two.
You might also want to resolve duplicate font issues (they are marked
with a black dot next to their name in the list of fonts). You
right-click (Ctrl-click) the font and reveal the fonts themselves int eh
Finder. Pretty convenient IMVHO.

If you have any further insights about something i might be overlooking I
would greatly apprechiate them. Otherwise it would still be great if you'
could report my issue to the appropriate channels.

It really looks like a font issue more than anything else.
If everything fails, you might even want to disable the different copies
of the Arial font you have and reinstall the fonts from your Office 2008
CD (though I suspect that the Arial font from the CD is OK, and it migth
be a conflict with another copy located on your drive).

Corentin

 

[paradiso]

Hi Corentin

I played around with the fonts some more, removed duplicates, installed fresh copies, moved them from my user fonts folder to the system fonts folder, all with no success. Then suddenly, during the launch of PPT it says 'optimizing font menu performance' indicating that ppt is indexing my fonts after a change (But there was no change prior to that particular launch of the programm). Suddenly the type was correct! Upon the next relaunch though it was again back to greek letters, again NO changes in the fonts folder, the input type or anything else. This now happened two times. Launch of PPT, 'optimizing font menu performance' and then correct type. Back to greek after the next launch without any intermediate changes. This clearly indicates a software bug probably connected to the triggering and processing of 'optimizing font menu performance'.
I will post more observations if they occur.
Best paradiso

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Paradiso:

That means the Office Font cache is going bad.

When you see "Optimising font menu performance" in any Office application,
it is re-building the Office Font Cache from the contents of the OS X font
cache.

You might like to try a cold restart (shut down, power off, and power on
again....)

This triggers several Unix housekeeping tasks, one of which is the re-create
the OS X font cache, from which Office gets its font cache data.

Hope this helps

Hi Corentin

I played around with the fonts some more, removed duplicates, installed fresh
copies, moved them from my user fonts folder to the system fonts folder, all
with no success. Then suddenly, during the launch of PPT it says 'optimizing
font menu performance' indicating that ppt is indexing my fonts after a change
(But there was no change prior to that particular launch of the programm).
Suddenly the type was correct! Upon the next relaunch though it was again back
to greek letters, again NO changes in the fonts folder, the input type or
anything else. This now happened two times. Launch of PPT, 'optimizing font
menu performance' and then correct type. Back to greek after the next launch
without any intermediate changes. This clearly indicates a software bug
probably connected to the triggering and processing of 'optimizing font menu
performance'.
I will post more observations if they occur.
Best paradiso

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John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia

 

[Iskander Ragy]

have the same problem but in arabic should any one tell me how could i writ arabic in office 2008
thanks

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Mac Office doesn't do Right-to-Left scripts.

Try Mellel or Nisus Writer, for starters.