Enabling alternate symbols and text...

On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 01:35:46 -0400, Stan Brown
wrote:

Mon, 4 Jun 2007 18:21:29 +0100 from Nightowl ]:
Yes, you definitely should be able to use alt-codes in XP Home (or
Character Map, or the US International keyboard, as Ken said).

Can we go back to basics for a minute? Just in case there's something
funny with Word,

There *is* something funny with Word, as I discovered when I
installed Office 2003 on my computer. All other applications,
including Excel 2003 and Access 2003, accept the Alt-#### codes, but
Word does not. You have to enter the hex Unicode and then press Alt-
X. Even for Microsoft, this appears particularly silly, having one
application disable the OS standard way of entering special
characters.



Sorry, Stan, not so--at least not here. I just tried Word 2007 on my
computer, and Word 2003 on my wife's. Alt-codes work fine on both.


--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

Wed, 6 Jun 2007 13:18:27 +0100 from Nightowl ]:
Stan Brown wrote on Wed, 6 Jun 2007:

There *is* something funny with Word, as I discovered when I
installed Office 2003 on my computer. All other applications,
including Excel 2003 and Access 2003, accept the Alt-#### codes, but
Word does not. You have to enter the hex Unicode and then press Alt-
X. Even for Microsoft, this appears particularly silly, having one
application disable the OS standard way of entering special
characters.

Gosh -- are you sure about this, Stan? Not that I'm doubting you, just
that I've never heard this before. How very odd.

Indeed it is. There's one important piece of information I forgot to
give: I have a laptop. In the course of a long thread on
microsoft.public.word.printingfonts early in 2005, we determined that
this is common behavior on laptops (though I don't know whether it
affects all of them), but not on desktops.

Apparently Word interferes with the Fn key in some way, even though
Excel and non-Office applications do not.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:52:23 -0700 from Ken Blake, MVP
:
On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 01:35:46 -0400, Stan Brown
wrote:
There *is* something funny with Word, as I discovered when I
installed Office 2003 on my computer. All other applications,
including Excel 2003 and Access 2003, accept the Alt-#### codes, but
Word does not. You have to enter the hex Unicode and then press Alt-
X. Even for Microsoft, this appears particularly silly, having one
application disable the OS standard way of entering special
characters.

Sorry, Stan, not so--at least not here. I just tried Word 2007 on my
computer, and Word 2003 on my wife's. Alt-codes work fine on both.

Sorry, it's been a couple of years since the discussion on
microsoft.public.word.printingfonts, and I forgot that this is a
problem on laptops (some? all?) not desktops.

My laptop has a "numeric keypad" overlaid on the letter keys. I can
either throw the keyboard into Numpad mode by pressing Fn+F11
(NumLk), or do individual numeric keys by pressing the Fn key. For
instance, M is 0, J is j, and 8 and 9 are 8 and 9. So if I press and
hold the Fn + Alt keys, then type MJ89, that's the equivalent of Alt-
0189 (the "1/2" character) in every application I've ever tried --
EXCEPT Word.

Sorry for the confusion -- I truly had forgotten that this Word quirk
applies to laptops and not to all computers. I'm curious whether it
applies to all laptops.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

On Thu, 7 Jun 2007 22:45:00 -0400, Stan Brown
wrote:

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 07:52:23 -0700 from Ken Blake, MVP
:
On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 01:35:46 -0400, Stan Brown
wrote:
There *is* something funny with Word, as I discovered when I
installed Office 2003 on my computer. All other applications,
including Excel 2003 and Access 2003, accept the Alt-#### codes, but
Word does not. You have to enter the hex Unicode and then press Alt-
X. Even for Microsoft, this appears particularly silly, having one
application disable the OS standard way of entering special
characters.

Sorry, Stan, not so--at least not here. I just tried Word 2007 on my
computer, and Word 2003 on my wife's. Alt-codes work fine on both.

Sorry, it's been a couple of years since the discussion on
microsoft.public.word.printingfonts, and I forgot that this is a
problem on laptops (some? all?) not desktops.

My laptop has a "numeric keypad" overlaid on the letter keys. I can
either throw the keyboard into Numpad mode by pressing Fn+F11
(NumLk), or do individual numeric keys by pressing the Fn key. For
instance, M is 0, J is j, and 8 and 9 are 8 and 9. So if I press and
hold the Fn + Alt keys, then type MJ89, that's the equivalent of Alt-
0189 (the "1/2" character) in every application I've ever tried --
EXCEPT Word.

Sorry for the confusion -- I truly had forgotten that this Word quirk
applies to laptops and not to all computers. I'm curious whether it
applies to all laptops.


I just fired up my Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop, running Word 2003. It
works fine here too. Word gives the correct characters with
Fn+Alt+numbers.


--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:54:03 -0700 from Ken Blake, MVP
:
On Thu, 7 Jun 2007 22:45:00 -0400, Stan Brown
wrote:
I'm curious whether it applies to all laptops.

I just fired up my Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop, running Word 2003. It
works fine here too. Word gives the correct characters with
Fn+Alt+numbers.

Thanks Ken.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 22:05:20 -0400, Stan Brown
wrote:

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:54:03 -0700 from Ken Blake, MVP
:
On Thu, 7 Jun 2007 22:45:00 -0400, Stan Brown
wrote:
I'm curious whether it applies to all laptops.

I just fired up my Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop, running Word 2003. It
works fine here too. Word gives the correct characters with
Fn+Alt+numbers.

Thanks Ken.


You're welcome, Stan.


--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please Reply to the Newsgroup