[UniMacTech] Symbols in Word on Mac and PC

[Dave Sole]

Peter surely you're not taking away the fun of blaming Microsoft for this ?



Peter Stagg wrote:
> >> Hi folks
> >> We have a user writing grant applications in both Word 2007 on a PC 
> and Word
> >> 2007 on a MacBook but some of the symbols are disappearing when 
> switching
> >> from on the other. If she uses the Greek Ï’, for example, in Word 
> 2008 then
> >> opens in Word 2007, the symbol is replaced with a box, and the same 
> happens
> >> the other way, and for some other symbols, too. I have found a few 
> threads
> >> on Google, but no real solutions, apart from using LaTex or PDF. 
> The grant
> >> has to be submitted as a Word doc, apparently.
> >> Has anyone found a way around this?
> >> Thanks
> >> Al
> > Response from user-:
> > Al
> > I have done it in two ways.  The first was via “insert ->symbol” 
> which was
> > how I had always done it.  These did a disappearing trick in the PC-Mac
> > exchanges. When I put them back in on the Mac by this process, they 
> seemed
> > to be fine and had been writing away merrily when right before my 
> eyes, I
> > saw word go through automatically and take them all out – quite 
> odd.  Then I
> > went onto the word help for inserting symbols and it suggested using the
> > objects palette and select symbols.  This I diligently did, but when 
> I open
> > on or send to a PC, these disappear too.  I thought Office had 
> gotten over
> > compatibility problems.
> > Thanks
> > Jennelle
>
> Ok this is a font problem - the square box indicated the selected font 
> does not have or is missing (never had to begin with - is corrupted 
> and lost) the glyph inserted which isn't as bad a seeing a question 
> mark take the place of the character you really want (this is trouble).
>
> The solution is make sure you use a *Unicode* font that is installed 
> on both systems. Arial Unicode MS (not plane Arial) and Lucida Sans 
> Unicode, form memory, are the two most complete Unicode fonts. There 
> should be little or no difference between these fonts on the two 
> platforms if they are from the same era (same release of office for 
> Mac/PC). Make sure you don't inset characters from Non-Unicode/Symbols 
> fonts (the old 256 character, TrueType, fonts) for example **Symbol**.
>
> For complete compatibility you can down-load a font like Douolus SIL 
> from http://tinyurl.com/6ashzy for both systems. This font looks a lot 
> like Times New Roman and contains all symbols required for the 
> International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and then some (not sure how 
> complete its coverage of Greek Letters is but I'd be surprised if it 
> didn't have all the glyphs you need).
>
> Remember also that fonts are a resource separate from the document. If 
> you need to send the doc electronically its best to embed the fonts 
> used in the document (look in the options panels) you can usually 
> choose between embedding only the symbols you've used or the entire 
> font. The first is preferable as Unicode fonts can be huge and the 
> size of your document will blow out completely.
>
> -- 
> Regards,
>
> Peter Stagg
> Faculty Webmaster
> Arts Information Technology
> University AUC Representative <http://www.auc.edu.au/>
>
> Faculty of Arts
> Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
> Building 11, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Clayton
> Telephone +61 3 9905 1221 Facsimile +61 3  9905 5117
> Mobile 0407 865 159
> Email peter.stagg at arts.monash.edu.au
> http://www.arts.monash.edu.au <http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/>
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