MS Word is substituting my punctuation marks with other characters

[figarot]

I have been using the MS Word that comes with Office 2007 to type up various stories and anecdotes for a grandchild living in the States. I myself am in South Africa.

I e-mail her the documents as Word doc attachments. My grandchild uses the same edition of Microsoft Office yet when she opens the docs she'll comment that it's somewhat confusing to read as some punctuation marks have been substituted with other characters, i.e. quotation marks (") are shown as @, and apostrophe's (') as the equals sign (=).

I presume this may have something to do with different keyboard codes for special characters in various countries. Am I correct? Are there other possible reasons? How can this substition of punctuation marks for other characters be avoided?

Thank you.

 

[Fnord]

Matching keyboard codes seems a good place to start. If that fails, then try using the same font at both ends of the transaction.

 

[JJM 777]

How can this substition of punctuation marks for other characters be avoided?

100% fool-proof method: Use a program that saves the document as Unicode (UTF-8). Strange if MS Word doesn´t do so by default. If your document is text only, you can use Notepad, and in the Save as... dialogue under the name of the document you see a menu where it suggests ANSI encoding by default, change that to UTF-8 and then save the document. When you send this UTF-8 encoded document to your friend as attachment of e-mail, all characters will be correct no matter if you write English, Serbo-Croatian or Japanese.

 

[figarot]

100% fool-proof method: Use a program that saves the document as Unicode (UTF-8). Strange if MS Word doesn´t do so by default. If your document is text only, you can use Notepad, and in the Save as... dialogue under the name of the document you see a menu where it suggests ANSI encoding by default, change that to UTF-8 and then save the document. When you send this UTF-8 encoded document to your friend as attachment of e-mail, all characters will be correct no matter if you write English, Serbo-Croatian or Japanese.

Thank you. I shall play around with Notepad and try that. Is there a way to send the document in Word format with the characters all still correct?

 

[Ocelot]

Certainly @ and quote's being swapped is typically using the wrong keyboard layout and nothing to do with word.

If my computer slips into thinking I have an american keyboard layout then when I hold down shift and press 2 then it shows up as an @ symbol. In fact the character shown above the 2 on a British Keyboard layout is the double quote. However in the States it's apparently an @

The same is true Vice Versa. Here I have an @ symbol where the Americans layout has the double quote. So once more if I have a British keyboard but windows thinks I have an american keyboard layout then when I press the key marked @ the software shows me a "

The answer is to go into Regional and Language Options (This is XP ymmv) from the control panel. ON the Languages Tab is a details button. Here you can ensure you have your local keyboard layout installed, remove any keyboad layouts you're not using and turn the language bar off (as this is typically only used by accident to confuse your keyboard layout)

 

[elgarak]

Certainly @ and quote's being swapped is typically using the wrong keyboard layout and nothing to do with word.

If my computer slips into thinking I have an american keyboard layout then when I hold down shift and press 2 then it shows up as an @ symbol. In fact the character shown above the 2 on a British Keyboard layout is the double quote. However in the States it's apparently an @

The same is true Vice Versa. Here I have an @ symbol where the Americans layout has the double quote. So once more if I have a British keyboard but windows thinks I have an american keyboard layout then when I press the key marked @ the software shows me a "

The answer is to go into Regional and Language Options (This is XP ymmv) from the control panel. ON the Languages Tab is a details button. Here you can ensure you have your local keyboard layout installed, remove any keyboad layouts you're not using and turn the language bar off (as this is typically only used by accident to confuse your keyboard layout)

But once you have saved the file and send it away, the keyboard layout should not matter anymore. At least not for the receiver to read the file.

This is an encoding problem.

 

[Ocelot]

But once you have saved the file and send it away, the keyboard layout should not matter anymore. At least not for the receiver to read the file.

This is an encoding problem.

But if I hit a key that I think should be a " but an @ symbol appears then it'll still be an @ symbol when it reaches its destination.

I realise that one the face of it, the OP suggeststhat the change happenes in transit but since that's not very likey I'm reading the OP to say that the problem is apparent on screen before he sends it even though he didn't say so.

 

[elgarak]

But if I hit a key that I think should be a " but an @ symbol appears then it'll still be an @ symbol when it reaches its destination.

I realise that one the face of it, the OP suggeststhat the change happenes in transit but since that's not very likey I'm reading the OP to say that the problem is apparent on screen before he sends it even though he didn't say so.

No, he types, saves, sends the file to his granddaughter. SHE opens, and gets the different characters.

Not a keyboard problem. Something messes up encoding in transit, or Word does not recognize the correct encoding.

 

[figarot]

No, he types, saves, sends the file to his granddaughter. SHE opens, and gets the different characters.

Not a keyboard problem. Something messes up encoding in transit, or Word does not recognize the correct encoding.

I have just forwarded the last e-mail I sent my grandchild back to me and when I open the attachment the punctuation is fine, as I typed it, so I'm thinking nothing's being changed in transit but that Word isn't recognizing the encoding on her side. Would it help if I altered my keyboard layout before saving and sending the doc/she altered her keyboard layout to read it properly upon receipt? And, if so, how exactly do(es) I/she do this?

 

[Foolmewunz]

Have your grandkid check HER language settings.

 

[Ocelot]

I have just forwarded the last e-mail I sent my grandchild back to me and when I open the attachment the punctuation is fine, as I typed it, so I'm thinking nothing's being changed in transit but that Word isn't recognizing the encoding on her side. Would it help if I altered my keyboard layout before saving and sending the doc/she altered her keyboard layout to read it properly upon receipt? And, if so, how exactly do(es) I/she do this?

OK then if it's showing OK as you type it then my theory is out of the window.

Take two.

What is your grand daughter using to open the document.

What font do you type in - does your granddaughter have that font installed.

If I PM you my e-mail address will you send me a sample document.

 

[Ocelot]

OK my research shows that Word 2007 uses a western European Character Set by default. (2003 whihc I still use, seems to use UTF-8 as it should)

There's instructions here which describe how to change the defaults to save in UTF-8

 

[figarot]

OK then if it's showing OK as you type it then my theory is out of the window.

Take two.

What is your grand daughter using to open the document.

What font do you type in - does your granddaughter have that font installed.

If I PM you my e-mail address will you send me a sample document.

I use Times New Roman font. No idea what font she uses but doubt the font would cause this hitch. I have no qualms sending a doc to your e-mail.

Grand-daughter uses Word to open the file.

 

[Wudang]

Ask her to try Tools-> Options -> Compatibility options and click the "font substitutions" button in case Word is switching fonts on her. All I can think of.