Yen symbol replacement

[dano]

Query from one of my users:

"A Word doc contains numerous instances of an unwanted character
substitution <yen symbol> for where a multiplication symbol is supposed
to be. I cannot perform a find/replace on the <yen symbol> as Word does
not recognize it as a character in the current document."

Is there a workaround for this? Is it a known problem?

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Dano,

Which version is that?

It seems like (probably) two things have gone wrong:

The doc originated on a PC and used the Symbol font for the multiplication
sign (character 180 in the Symbol font).
The code wasn't changed on the Mac (still 180 which is the Yen sign,
although normally it would change from the Windows character set to the
Apple Roman character set, which would result in character 171 = ´ acute
accent on the Mac), and the applied Symbol font got lost too.

If I use the Mac OS X character palette to insert a multiplication sign from
the "Symbol" font into the document, it inserts a Yen sign in Word X. But
the creator of the document would have immediately seen that.

Perhaps someone else has an idea how that may have happened in the document,
or know from experience?

You should be able to search for the Yen sign and replace it with the
multiplication sign (either from the Symbol font, or, in Word2004, with the
Unicode multiplication sign U+00D7.

You can copy the Yen to the clipboard (Command+C), and then paste it into
the Find dialog (Command+V).

The more difficult part is the replacement, at least in Word X.
Type ´ (the acute accent, code 171) in "Replace with", and then "Format >
Font: Symbol".

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Klaus Linke]

Another possibility: Maybe the Yen signs are symbol fields?
Show field codes to check (Preferences > View, or use the Option+F9 toggle).
If it's a symbol field, it would explain the unchanged character code 180.

If the field code contains "Symbol", the Symbol font might be missing on the
user's machine.
In that case, you might try to (re)install it to fix the problem.

Or to replace the symbol fields with something else, copy the contents of
the field without the curly braces to the clipboard.
In "Find what", type ^d (which will find the field brace), and paste the
clipboard content after that (Command+V).

Regards,
Klaus

 

[dano]

Klaus,

Thanks for the input. I've showed your responses to my colleague and he
thinks you may have something helpful to him.

We'll check it out.

Thanks again,

Dan

 

[dano]

Which version is that?

Mostly X.

My reply is in another reply. We'll check these suggestions and see what
we can come up with.