Microsoft KB Archive/290978

= WD2002: Symbol Characters Are Changed to Box Characters =

Article ID: 290978

Article Last Modified on 11/23/2006

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Word 2002 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q290978



For a Microsoft Word 2000 version of this article, see 212396.

For a Microsoft Word 98 Macintosh Edition version of this article, see 184634.

For a Microsoft Word 97 version of this article, see 160022.



SYMPTOMS
In Microsoft Word, 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.



CAUSE
Word displays the box characters after it translates the symbol font to its Unicode equivalent. Therefore, this behavior occurs if the following steps are performed in the given order:
 * 1) The text is formatted with a symbol font, such as Wingdings.
 * 2) The file is saved.
 * 3) The text is reformatted with a non-symbol font, such as Times New Roman.



WORKAROUND
Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language being demonstrated and the tools used to create and debug procedures. Microsoft support professionals 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 needs. If you have limited programming experience, you may want to contact a Microsoft Certified Partner or the Microsoft fee-based consulting line at (800) 936-5200. For more information about Microsoft Certified Partners, please visit the following Microsoft Web site:

https://partner.microsoft.com/global/30000104

For more information about the support options that are available and about how to contact Microsoft, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;CNTACTMS

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

290140 OFFXP: How to Run Sample Code from Knowledge Base Articles

The following Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro converts the symbol characters to non-symbol characters.

NOTE: Before you run this macro, select the box 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.



MORE INFORMATION
The following table lists common symbol and non-symbol fonts:

Unicode
Unicode is a 16-bit character set designed to cover all of 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 in UNIX and Microsoft 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 Microsoft Windows NT operating system.

Unicode is a 16-bit character set, in which 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 Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Microsoft 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 &quot;-&quot; character 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 the following location:

http://www.unicode.org/

Additional query words: square boxed garbage incorrect font symbols change changed changing prb

Keywords: kbdtacode kbpending kbprb KB290978

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