Microsoft KB Archive/171071

= WD97: Extended Characters Improperly Converted in ASCII RTF File =

Article ID: 171071

Article Last Modified on 1/20/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Word 97 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q171071



SYMPTOMS
If you create or edit RTF (Rich Text Format) code and specify the ASCII character set, Microsoft Word 97 may incorrectly map the extended ASCII characters to extended ANSI characters. This results in incorrect characters appearing when you open the document in Word 97.



CAUSE
Word 97 ignores the RTF keyword \pc that is used to specify the ASCII character set. Instead, Word uses the default ANSI character set.

Because ASCII and ANSI have different extended character sets, when Word maps extended ASCII characters to their equivalent ANSI values, these are different characters.



RESOLUTION
To correct this problem, install Microsoft Word 97 Service Release 1 (SR- 1).



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Word 97 for Windows. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Word 97 SR-1.

For additional information about SR-1, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

172475 OFF97: How to Obtain and Install MS Office 97 SR-1



MORE INFORMATION
When you create or edit RTF code, you can specify the character set the file uses with the following keywords: \ansi, \mac, \pc, and \pca. Word 97 ignores the \pc keyword that specifies the ASCII character set, and instead uses the default ANSI character set.

NOTE: Earlier versions of Word correctly interpreted the character set keyword.

