Microsoft KB Archive/211594

= XL2000: Characters Replaced by Question Marks When You Save to Excel 5.0/95 File Format =

Article ID: 211594

Article Last Modified on 11/5/2003

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Excel 2000 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q211594





SYMPTOMS
IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

When you save a file that contains Greek characters or certain multilingual characters to the "Microsoft Excel 5.0/95 Workbook" file format, some characters may be replaced by a question mark (?).



CAUSE
This problem occurs if the characters do not exist in the default system code page.



RESOLUTION
To resolve this issue, after you install Microsoft Excel 2000, you must add a key to the registry that specifies which code page to use when you save an Excel file to an earlier file format. To do this, follow these steps:

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

 Click Start, and then click Run. In the Open box, type regedit and then click OK. In Registry Editor, expand the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Excel\Microsoft Excel

 On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value. With New Value #1 selected, type OldExcelSaveCodePage, and then press ENTER. With the value OldExcelSaveCodePage selected, click Modify on the Edit menu.  In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, click Decimal. Type the value for the code page that you want to use in the Value Data box, and then click OK.

Values for some of the most commonly used code pages are listed in the following table:   Language                      Code Page ---

English                       1252 French                        1252 German                        1252 Spanish                       1252 Italian                       1252 Dutch                         1252 Brazilian                     1252 Swedish                       1252 Danish                        1252 Norwegian                     1252 Finnish                       1252 Portuguese                    1252 Catalan                       1252 Polish                        1250 Hungarian                     1250 Czech                         1250 Slovenian                     1250 Romanian                      1250 Croatian                      1250 Slovakian                     1250 Serbian (Latin)               1250 Albanian                      1250 Greek                         1253 Russian                       1251 Ukrainian                     1251 Bulgarian Serbian (Cyrillic)  1251 Belarussian                   1251 Turkish                       1254 </li></ol>

NOTE: Setting the OldExcelSaveCodePage value in the registry does not affect previously saved files.

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STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

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MORE INFORMATION
Microsoft Excel 2000 allows you to enter characters from more than one of the ANSI (8-bit) code pages. When you save your file to the "Microsoft Excel 5.0/95 Workbook" format, all the characters are converted to the Unicode characters for the code page that is defined as the system default code page. If the default code page does not contain a character that is available in the active code page, the character may be converted to a question mark.

Additional query words: XL2000

Keywords: kbbug kbpending KB211594

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