unable to insert symbol with latest version of Office

[blachman]

I recently upgraded to Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac.

But, now I can't use "insert symbol." Every time I try I get boxes in
the Word document. Interestingly, if I paste the text in other
applications (like Eudora or even in this message the "boxes" display
as symbols. But, they won't display or print in a Word document. I
tried the latest update, but have the same problem. I did not have
this problem with Office X. Can you give me any guidance? I am using
a Mac G4 with Tiger 10.4.2.

 

[Elliott Roper]

I recently upgraded to Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac.

But, now I can't use "insert symbol." Every time I try I get boxes in
the Word document. Interestingly, if I paste the text in other
applications (like Eudora or even in this message the "boxes" display
as symbols. But, they won't display or print in a Word document. I
tried the latest update, but have the same problem. I did not have
this problem with Office X. Can you give me any guidance? I am using
a Mac G4 with Tiger 10.4.2.

I also recently changed from X to 2004. I can reproduce what you
report, depending on the symbol and the font I'm in.

2004 has started using Unicode. X used "Apple Extended". It looks like
the insert symbol dialog expects the latter, at least in some fonts,
and then Word puts its fingers in its ears, and draws a box instead.

My workaround is to abandon 'insert symbol' and to use the Mac's
"Character Palette" instead. It might be naughty, but it works.

For instance, if I insert an Apple sign, in either Times New Roman,
(Word 2004 Unicode variant) or Adobe Garamond Pro ( a Unicode open type
font), insert symbol tells me it is inserting "character 240 (Unicode
character 63743)" and it gives me a goddamn box!

If I use the character palette to insert the same character into my
Word doc it works like a bought one. I even made sure it was the same
unicode glyph F8FF aka 63743 in decimal.

...and the reason is that character 63743 does not exist in either of
the two fonts I tried with insert character in Word. Character palette
silently inserts the character with its own choice of font, in my case,
it snuck in a Lucida Grande apple - a granny smith apple if ever there
was one.

Back in Word, when I changed the font of the box to Optima Extra Black
it leapt out as some kind of golden delicious.

So, Word is being strict about the font when insert character is done
in 'normal text'. It wont let you change fonts except to swap to
various 'sort' fonts like wingdings.

This is definitely a bug, since it shows the expected glyph in the
selection palette and yet drops a box into your document.

(I'll file this post as a bug report if I can work out how. I'm blowed
if I can be bothered typing it all in again)

If you use character palette, it might be prudent to confirm that it
works with a print to pdf, and also try mailing it to someone on the
dark side. The odds are that it won't work on the dark side unless the
recipient has your own impeccable taste in fonts.

(Of course, you can always send the poor muppet the PDF, because it
does embed fonts properly most of the time, and won't screw up your
pagination either - that's just a sly dig for the poor sod reading the
bug report)

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

2004 has started using Unicode. X used "Apple Extended". It looks like
the insert symbol dialog expects the latter, at least in some fonts,
and then Word puts its fingers in its ears, and draws a box instead.

My workaround is to abandon 'insert symbol' and to use the Mac's
"Character Palette" instead. It might be naughty, but it works.

Actually, it's not naughty: it's recommended. That's how you're supposed to
do it. It's not the Insert as such, but "Symbol font" (which is not actually
a font), that does not work as it did in X and earlier for many (most) such
characters. Use Character Palette to do the inserting - and you get
literally thousands more characters to play with. I would recommend using
Lucida Grande if the standard (but incomplete) Unicode Microsoft fonts
(Verdana, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Arial and some Asian fonts) don't
have the character, even though Word Windows doesn't have Lucida Grande and
will substitute another font (usually Arial Unicode) that does have the
characters - unless absolute identical equivalence is required. Often the
special inserted characters don't look enough like standard characters to
make a difference. At least you know the character exists on both platforms,
but of course needs 2004 on the Mac to display it if there is no "Apple
Extended" character equivalent. If you're just sticking to characters that
you used to be able to find in "Symbol font" in X, I think you should be OK
everywhere, but I have not tested exhaustively.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Actually, it's not naughty: it's recommended. That's how you're supposed to
do it.

That's also how you do it in most other apps...
The only thing is that it's not as easy to assign a custom keyboard
shortcut to insert the symbol in Word.

Corentin

 

[Elliott Roper]

Actually, it's not naughty: it's recommended. That's how you're supposed to
do it. It's not the Insert as such, but "Symbol font" (which is not actually
a font), that does not work as it did in X and earlier for many (most) such
characters. Use Character Palette to do the inserting - and you get
literally thousands more characters to play with. I would recommend using
Lucida Grande if the standard (but incomplete) Unicode Microsoft fonts
(Verdana, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Arial and some Asian fonts) don't
have the character, even though Word Windows doesn't have Lucida Grande and
will substitute another font (usually Arial Unicode) that does have the
characters - unless absolute identical equivalence is required. Often the
special inserted characters don't look enough like standard characters to
make a difference. At least you know the character exists on both platforms,
but of course needs 2004 on the Mac to display it if there is no "Apple
Extended" character equivalent. If you're just sticking to characters that
you used to be able to find in "Symbol font" in X, I think you should be OK
everywhere, but I have not tested exhaustively.

Thanks Paul. That makes sense.
I did think that the MS supplied fonts were supposed to be identical
enough on both Mac and Windows.

Is there any way on a Mac to be assured that a Unicode glyph you are
thinking of inserting (via the character palette of course) is going to
work on the PC side? I was hoping that TNR and Arial would have filled
that role.

For completeness I woke up Word X. It opened my test document (unbidden
and with a "recovered"). As expected, the unicode glyphs were rendered
as underscores and insert symbol offered an apple, which inserted OK.

So insert symbol in Word 2004 really is broken. They should have taken
it out of the product and incorporated character palette properly.

 

[blachman]

Thanks, Elliott, Paul and Corentin. Your information was very helpful
and I appreciate the time you took to explain the problem and the
solution. I hope between us this can be reported as a bug. I haven't
had any luck with that either. Thanks again.
Branton

 

[alex]

I recently upgraded to Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac.

But, now I can't use "insert symbol." Every time I try I get boxes in
the Word document. Interestingly, if I paste the text in other
applications (like Eudora or even in this message the "boxes" display
as symbols. But, they won't display or print in a Word document. I
tried the latest update, but have the same problem. I did not have
this problem with Office X. Can you give me any guidance? I am using
a Mac G4 with Tiger 10.4.2.

This is strange. I don't have this problem. I work a lot with Greek
symbols and am sick and tired of going into "insert symbol" option
every time. My approach that worked over three versions of Word is
rather simple. Go to "insert symbol" uder Insert menu and choose Symbol
font. Click on a character to insert and then click on shortcut. Hit
Control plus Latin letter (a for alpha, b for beta, etc.; the window
will show "Control+a") and click on Assign. Close the window. Now, when
you press "control" and "a" together in any Word document, you will
have your alpha (the computer still recognizes it as your standard
font). I have customized the keyboard for about ten symbols and they
never fail. Moreover, Word for Windows will properly recognize it.
Hope this is helpful. If not, try to trash Word preferences and/or
install all service packs. I have OS 10.4.2 and 10.3.9 on two different
computers.
Best,
Alex

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Is there any way on a Mac to be assured that a Unicode glyph you are
thinking of inserting (via the character palette of course) is going to
work on the PC side? I was hoping that TNR and Arial would have filled
that role.

Yes. If the character is shown in Character Palette to be available in any
of the Microsoft fonts (Verdana, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Arial, and
some Asian fonts which usually contain "MS" in their names), then insert one
of those. Those will appear exactly the same in Word Windows. The problem is
only where no Microsoft font available here has the character.

The Microsoft fonts listed above are virtually (or maybe even completely)
identical to their equivalents on Windows. The big lack is that we do not
have the special, enormous "Arial Unicode MS" (that's its real name - not
the same as normal Arial which, yes is Unicode in Office 2004 but with far
fewer characters) - that has the entire Unicode 3.0 character set - some
51,000 glyphs. The European Microsoft fonts listed above have only about
1000 characters each (fewer in some cases), the Asian ones far more (about
15,000). Even Lucida Grande has only 2200, but that includes most European
extensions and alphabets, plus many symbols.

Learn much more at http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html .

I'm told you can fish "Arial Unicode MS" out of Windows 2000 or XP in VPC
and bring it over to the Mac side (/Library/Fonts/ or ~/Library/Fonts/). I'm
not sure all its characters will all show up in Character Palette, but I
think they should.


--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Thanks, Elliott, Paul and Corentin. Your information was very helpful
and I appreciate the time you took to explain the problem and the
solution. I hope between us this can be reported as a bug. I haven't
had any luck with that either. Thanks again.

No, it's not a bug. It's by design. As Elliott says, probably they should
just strip "Insert Symbol" out completely form Office 2004, but as Alex
points out, it still works for some characters. (See next.)

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

This is strange. I don't have this problem. I work a lot with Greek
symbols and am sick and tired of going into "insert symbol" option
every time. My approach that worked over three versions of Word is
rather simple. Go to "insert symbol" uder Insert menu and choose Symbol
font. Click on a character to insert and then click on shortcut. Hit
Control plus Latin letter (a for alpha, b for beta, etc.; the window
will show "Control+a") and click on Assign. Close the window. Now, when
you press "control" and "a" together in any Word document, you will
have your alpha (the computer still recognizes it as your standard
font). I have customized the keyboard for about ten symbols and they
never fail. Moreover, Word for Windows will properly recognize it.
Hope this is helpful. If not, try to trash Word preferences and/or
install all service packs. I have OS 10.4.2 and 10.3.9 on two different
computers.

You happen to be working with characters which are not a problem. Unaccented
Greek characters, traditionally appearing in so-called "Symbol" font, are
exactly the same, and are mapped to, the same characters in various fonts
that appear also in Character Palette. They appear in a great many fonts,
some 57 on my computer (counting Bold, Italic, etc.) , including all the
Microsoft Unicode fonts.

Accented Greek characters are a completely different matter - most of them
appearing only (here) in Lucida Grande, Times and Helvetica - Apple fonts.
You could never access them _anywhere_ on the Mac in OS 9 unless you bought
your own fonts, and even then would not work in most apps (and maybe not at
all - they were not part of the "International text" on classic Macs. They
are only Unicode.)

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Learn much more at http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html .

Isn't that a fantastic resource? Squirrelled!

 

[blachman]

Now I've discovered a problem in that "bullets" also will not display
or print. Instead I get the infamous outline of a box where the bullet
should be. Any suggestitons? Using Microsoft Office 2004 on a Mac G4
OSX 10.4.2.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Now I've discovered a problem in that "bullets" also will not display
or print. Instead I get the infamous outline of a box where the bullet
should be. Any suggestitons? Using Microsoft Office 2004 on a Mac G4
OSX 10.4.2.

You really have got the X to 2004 blues haven't you.

Are you seeing this in old Word X docs, now being opened in 2004?

If so, something is going wrong as your 2004 docs pick up the 'Apple
extended' bullets.

If the bullets were placed there by bullets and numbering (i.e a list
is involved), select your bulleted list, wait till none of the experts
on this list are looking[1], then go to format -> bullets and numbering
and click on one of the bullet styles that takes your fancy.

If the bullets were your own hand-typed (option-8) bullets, then find
and replace with something tasty from the character palette will do the
trick.

If it is going wrong on fresh 2004 docs, then something weird is going
on. Post back with a detailed recipe for reproducing your "missing
glyph box" problem.

1. Idly fiddling with bullets and numbering is supposed to cause "Bad
Things".

 

[blachman]

Yes, I see this problem with BOTH old Word X docs being opened in 2004
and with new docs createdin Word 2004 (I just tested this). I have not
messed with bullets nor have I used my own. All bullets were created
(in Office X) by selecting the text and pressing the bullets button on
the formatting palette. I have also gone to the forma/bullets &
numbering menu and tried (several times) clicking on a couple of
different bullet styles, but that hasn't worked either. As an aside I
notice that some of the text colors on my PowerPoint slides have
changed to a black color. As another aside, I have not deleted Office
X from my system, but I don't think that would make a difference, would
it? (using Office 2004 on Mac G4, OSX 10.4.2)

 

[Beth Rosengard]

If you change fonts to one of the MSFT fonts (say Times New Roman), do you
still have the problem?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[blachman]

Yes, the problem is still there. I just did a test with Times New
Roman on a new document in Office 2004. (I was using arial and arial
narrow in the old, Office X documents).

 

[Elliott Roper]

Yes, I see this problem with BOTH old Word X docs being opened in 2004
and with new docs createdin Word 2004 (I just tested this). I have not
messed with bullets nor have I used my own. All bullets were created
(in Office X) by selecting the text and pressing the bullets button on
the formatting palette. I have also gone to the forma/bullets &
numbering menu and tried (several times) clicking on a couple of
different bullet styles, but that hasn't worked either. As an aside I
notice that some of the text colors on my PowerPoint slides have
changed to a black color. As another aside, I have not deleted Office
X from my system, but I don't think that would make a difference, would
it? (using Office 2004 on Mac G4, OSX 10.4.2)

On the last point. No. You and I are new 2004 users. I left my X in
place, expecting the worst, but I'm not seeing your bullet problem.

I'd play with Beth's suggestion. See if your problem travels with fonts
changes. What font is specified in the paragraph style you are
bulleting with such limited success?

I tested the bullet thing in Adobe Garamond Pro. About as far from a
Microsoft font as you could get. It was OK.

As far as Powerpoint goes, I think it must be trying to tell you
something. Any time Powerpoint tries to tone down your presentation, it
must be *seriously* Comic Sans.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Yes, the problem is still there. I just did a test with Times New
Roman on a new document in Office 2004. (I was using arial and arial
narrow in the old, Office X documents).

That is seriously nuts. Mail me a test file. I'll check if it's your
file or your Word set-up.
Use an e-mail I can reply to, then you can check whether my test file
works there.

 

[blachman]

Ok, I've e-mailed two attachments to what I think is your e-mail
address. Please let me know if you did not get them.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Ok, I've e-mailed two attachments to what I think is your e-mail
address. Please let me know if you did not get them.

Thanks. I would have missed them, but they were slumming it in my mail
server's sin bin, lolling about with generous offers from Nigerian oil
minister's widows and offers of amazing surgical enhancement involving
nothing but pills. That cyptic stuff for fooling spambots at the bottom
of each of my posts says to swap out nospam and replace it with
elliott. No harm done. I hate having to mung my e-mail address, but a
couple of years ago there was this horrid spambot called swen who
harvested e-mail addresses from news. It turned out that its one saving
grace was to ignore the left of addresses if they were "nospam". I was
getting 10,000 per hour and buckled under the strain.

You are not going to like it. Both files' bullets are pristine 100%
quality round bullets. In both Word X and Word 2004.

So it is your set-up that's broken. Might I suggest you might have a
font disaster on your hands.

You might try OS X Font Book to search for duplicates. Try to keep the
Times New Roman and the Arial that came with 2004 if you find
duplicates of those. (You can sling all TNR and Arial and then copy
them again from Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts into
/Library/Fonts (recommended if you are the Mac's principal user)

You may also need to clean out the font caches that the system and Word
use to speed things up. Look on the MVPs site for detailed directions.
The method I prefer is to run Font Finagler (download it via
versiontracker.com) it is shareware, but you get 10 free goes if you
want to be a tightwad like me.

For others who might be able to help blachman better than I can, his
samples were in arial regular and TNR. They were the autonumber bullet
variety.