WD97: MS LineDraw Font Not Usable in Word

In Microsoft Word 97, if you open a document from an earlier version of Word or from another word processing program that uses the MS LineDraw Font, you cannot use this font to draw lines or boxes.

The MS LineDraw font is included in earlier versions of Microsoft Word, MS- DOS, and Microsoft Windows 3.0, and is not intended as a drawing tool.

This font is intended for importing documents that contain line drawings from MS-DOS based programs, such as WordPerfect. Word 97 identifies the MS LineDraw font as a symbol font, and interprets text in the MS LineDraw font as a series of symbols. Therefore, many formatting and proofing features of Word ignore this text.

To draw lines or boxes within Word, use the drawing tools and features that ship with Word to create lines, outlines, boxes and other shapes. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Turn on the Drawing toolbar by pointing to Toolbars on the View menu, and clicking Drawing.
2. Use the Drawing toolbar buttons to draw the shapes you want.

The Courier New font contains the exact same character set as MS LineDraw. Word 97 should map the MS LineDraw font to Courier New; however, because there are several versions of the Courier New font, Word may or may not map it correctly. The Courier New version 2.0 font should allow the correct mapping of the MS LineDraw font.

To access the line drawing characters that used to be available in MS LineDraw, click Symbol on the Insert menu, and then click (Normal Text) in the Font list.

For additional information about the MS LineDraw font, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: For more information about drawing tools in Word 97, click the Office Assistant, type "drawing tools," click Search, and then click one of the topics.

NOTE: If the Assistant is hidden, click the Office Assistant button on the Standard toolbar. If Word Help is not installed on your computer, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: