non-breaking hyphen in the document properties is replaced by a sq

[Philippe]

Would anyone know how to avoid a non-breaking hyphen part of the document
title, as defined in the document properties, showing as a square when
inserted in the document itself? Here is what I did:

- Goto Files --> Properties
- Select the Summary tab
- Enter the tile for the document, with a non-breaking hyphen in it
- In the document itself, goto Insert --> Field
- Select Title

The document title appears, but with the non-breaking hyphen replaced by a
square. Of course you could correct by hand, but every time the document is
refreshed by F9, the square comes back.

If you know how to fix that, please advise.
Thanks,
Philippe.

 

[CyberTaz]

One thought: It sounds like the font being used in the doc doesn't support
the non-breaking hyphen character. Have you tried formatting the text using
a different (preferably newer Unicode) font?

 

[Philippe]

Hi Bob,

Thank you for the suggestion. Actually, in the body of the document, I can
use the non-breaking hyphen and it is properly displayed and printed.

Also, how do I format the text with a newer Unicode font? It is quite
obscure to me. I don't even know how to view which Unicode font verion I
have.

Anyway, I entered a non-breaking hyphen in the body of the document (using
the Insert --> Symbol menu) and did the Alt-X on it, nothing was displayed.
Then I did the Alt-X on the square that appears instead of the wanted
non-breaking hyphen in the inserted Title field: the value 2011 was returned.
It doesn't correspond to any known charater in the Character Map utility of
my PC.

Does this give you any hint?

Best,
Philippe.

 

[CyberTaz]

I haven't been able to reproduce the problem using my method, but perhaps
I'm going about it a different way.

I have the title in the document formatted using the Title Style & including
a nb- so the Doc Properties picks that up as a part of the title. I then
have a Title field in the doc which displays the title accurately including
the nb- which doesn't convert to a box. However, depending on which fonts I
use the nb- in the title field may come up as a 2011 (non-breaking hyphen)
or may display as a 2013 (en dash) if the font doesn't contain the nh-
character.

What *did* cause the box to appear is if I copy the nb- in the doc & paste
it into the Properties... it then comes into the Title field as a box rather
than as a dash of any sort. Also, if I type the Shift+Control+- keystroke
into the Title Property it comes into the field as a double dash whose
actual appearance varies depending on the font with which I format the
field. So apparently it isn't so much a Unicode issue as it is a matter of
the fact that the font used in the Properties dialog doesn't support the nb-
even though it displays a "nearest neighbor" character. That evidently
doesn't get translated back into the doc so Word doesn't know what character
to display - hence it throws up the box.

 

[Philippe]

Bob,

What you said here about the font starts to make sense to me, thank you for
your research. So I tried an experiment: I changed the font (was Arial) to
another, most of the times I still got the square, sometimes a blank, and
with "Lucida Sans Unicode" I finally got the non-breaking hyphen. This is
the only font available with my version of Word that reads "Unicode". I am
running Word 2003 (11.8134.8132) SP2.

Best regards,
Philippe.