WD97: Symbol Characters Change to Box Characters

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This article was previously published under Q160022

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 when you do the following:

Format text using a symbol font, such as Wingdings.
Select the text from Step 1 and apply a non-symbol font, such as Times New Roman.

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The following Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications macro converts the symbol characters to non-symbol characters:

NOTE: Select the square characters before you run the following macro.

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

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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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APPLIES TO

Microsoft Word 97 Standard Edition

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kbdtacode kbpending kbprb KB160022

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This article was written about products for which Microsoft no longer offers support. Therefore, this article is offered "as is" and will no longer be updated.

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