Microsoft KB Archive/212396

= WD2000: Symbol Characters Change to Box Characters =

Article ID: 212396

Article Last Modified on 6/17/2005

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Word 2000 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q212396



For a Microsoft Word 2002 version of this article, see 290978.



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.



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:
 * 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. 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.



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

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/

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

Keywords: kbprb kbdtacode kbpending KB212396

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