WD2000: Symbol Characters Change to Box Characters

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This article was previously published under Q212396

For a Microsoft Word 2002 version of this article, see 290978 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290978/EN-US/ ) .

SYMPTOMS

When you format text with a symbol font, such as Wingdings, and then change to a non-symbol font such as Times New Roman, the text is replaced with box characters.

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CAUSE

Word displays the box characters after it translates the symbol font to its Unicode equivalent.

This problem occurs if the following steps are taken in the order listed:

The text is formatted with a symbol font, such as Wingdings.
The file is saved.
The text is reformatted with a non-symbol font, such as Times New Roman.

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Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. The following Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications macro converts the symbol characters to non-symbol characters.

NOTE: Before you run the following macro, select the square characters.

   Sub ConvertSymbol()
      Dim dlg As Object
      Dim NoFC As Integer
      Dim SCP As Integer
      Dim StartRange As Range
      Dim UniCodeNum As Integer
      ' Temporarily disable Screen Updating
      Application.ScreenUpdating = False
      ' Temporarily disable Smart Cut & Paste
      If Options.SmartCutPaste = True Then
         SCP = 1
         Options.SmartCutPaste = False
      End If
      ' Temporarily display field text
      If ActiveWindow.View.ShowFieldCodes = False Then
         NoFC = 1
         ActiveWindow.View.ShowFieldCodes = True
      End If
      ' Set StartRange variable to current selection's range
      Set StartRange = Selection.Range
      Selection.Collapse
      ' Select first, then each next character in user-defined selection
      Selection.MoveRight unit:=wdCharacter, Extend:=wdExtend
      While Selection.End <= StartRange.End And _
      ActiveDocument.Content.End > Selection.End
        ' If the character is a space, then move to next character
        Set dlg = Dialogs(wdDialogInsertSymbol)
        UniCodeNum = dlg.charnum
        If UniCodeNum = 32 Then
          Selection.Collapse
          Selection.MoveRight unit:=wdCharacter, Extend:=wdMove
          Selection.MoveRight unit:=wdCharacter, Extend:=wdExtend
        End If
        ' Loop, converting symbol Unicode characters to ASCII characters
        Set dlg = Dialogs(wdDialogInsertSymbol)
        UniCodeNum = dlg.charnum
        While UniCodeNum < 0 And Selection.End <= StartRange.End _
        And ActiveDocument.Content.End > Selection.End
           Selection.Delete
           Selection.InsertAfter (ChrW(UniCodeNum + 4096))
           Selection.Collapse (wdCollapseEnd)
           Selection.MoveRight unit:=wdCharacter, Extend:=wdExtend
           Set dlg = Dialogs(wdDialogInsertSymbol)
           UniCodeNum = dlg.charnum
        Wend
        Selection.Collapse (wdCollapseEnd)
        Selection.MoveRight unit:=wdCharacter, Extend:=wdExtend
      Wend
      ' Reset Word document settings
      If SCP = 1 Then Options.SmartCutPaste = True
      If NoFC = 1 Then ActiveWindow.View.ShowFieldCodes = False
         Selection.Collapse (wdCollapseStart)
         Selection.MoveLeft unit:=wdCharacter
         Application.ScreenUpdating = True
   End Sub

NOTE: After you run the macro and the text is converted to non-symbol characters, you may need to format the text to the correct font.

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MORE INFORMATION

The following table lists common symbol and non-symbol fonts.

   Symbol Fonts                             Non-Symbol Fonts
   ---------------------------------------------------------

   Bookshelf Symbol 3                       Arial
   Marlett                                  Book Antiqua
   Monotype Sorts                           Bookman Old Style
   MS Outlook                               Century Schoolbook
   MT Extra                                 Courier New
   Symbol                                   Garamond
   Wingdings                                Times New Roman

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Unicode

Unicode is a 16-bit character set designed to cover all the world's major living languages, in addition to scientific symbols and dead languages that are the subject of scholarly interest. It eliminates the complexity of multi-byte character sets that are currently used on UNIX and Windows to support Asian languages. A consortium of companies including Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Digital, and IBM created Unicode. These companies used information from the ISO-10646 standard to produce a single standard in 1993. Unicode is the basis for the Windows NT operating system.

Unicode is a 16-bit character set where all characters occupy the same space. The first 256 values are the same as the ISO-Latin character set, which is also the basis for the ANSI character set used in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. However, Unicode defines 34,168 distinct coded characters. In most character sets, a single value is often assigned to several characters. For example, in ASCII a "-" is used to represent a hyphen, a minus sign, a dash, and a non-breaking hyphen. In Unicode, each meaning is given its own code; that is, a hyphen is represented by a character different from a minus sign, and so forth. The Unicode standard contains only one instance of each character and assigns it a unique name and code value. It also supports "combining" accent characters, which follow the base character that they are to modify.

For more information about Unicode, visit the Unicode Web site at:

http://www.unicode.org/ (http://www.unicode.org/)

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